


to hold moonlight in your hands

by RainbowSprinkleDonuts



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 17:58:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19323235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainbowSprinkleDonuts/pseuds/RainbowSprinkleDonuts
Summary: “Surely you didn’t expect to come all this way for just a kiss,” Sansa dared to propose.Dany’s brow quirked and her lips parted in a tentative smile.“I am not foolish enough to ever expect anything from you, Lady Sansa,” Dany averred. She shifted forward, holding her gaze and toying with the coppery ends of Sansa’s hair. She grazed her knuckles along Sansa’s chin, uttering softly, “But I certainly hoped for more.”--The quiet moments history will never know of Sansa and Daenerys finding love in each other, had she gone to Dragonstone in Jon's stead.Mixes book and show canon, up to Jon leaving for Dragonstone after which I attempt to fix everything.





	to hold moonlight in your hands

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this to try and heal my broken Daenerys heart, and thought maybe it could help someone else.

_ “You’re not what I expected.”  _

 

Those were the first words she said to her. She being Queen Daenerys Targaryen, the First of Her Name, The Unburnt, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Queen of somewhere called Mereen, something about chains, Protector of the Realm, and all the empty words Sansa has heard a thousand times from foolish boys playing at king. Oh, and lest we forget, Mother of those three, she counted, Dragons that gave the Northern party a bracing welcome. 

 

Her being Sansa Stark, merely Lady of Winterfell, and even that hinged on the success of this visit. 

 

Daenerys certainly wasn’t what Sansa expected either. That’s not entirely true, a few things about her were as she’d imagined. The silver hair that fell in ripples down her shoulders and a pair of stormy eyes. Standing before her felt like looking up at an ancient portrait in the Red Keep rather than a person. However, even seated, she could tell the Queen was nearly a head shorter than herself.  _ Young _ Queen, she should add. Another quality that she’d somehow miscalculated. However, she didn’t dare voice any of these thoughts. 

 

Instead she remained stone faced and relayed her brother’s regrets and a string of courtly pleasantries to try and assuage the unabashedly annoyed monarch. They weren’t off to a good start, that much was certain. In fact, Daenerys only managed to perk up at the mention of the White Walkers. 

 

“The creatures from the children’s stories?” she interrupted, with an air of amusement. 

 

“Well, yes, your grace, but…” Sansa faltered, but the Queen bent down to mumble something to Tyrion. He mumbled back, and Sansa tried not to let her temper flare. 

 

“Have you seen these White Walkers yourself, Lady Sansa,” she asked her. 

 

Sansa had expected this, but there was no sense in lying. 

 

“No, your grace, but my brother, the King in the North, has seen them. Fought them several times and I can see no reason for him to lie, your grace,” Sansa replied, with all the dignity she could muster. 

 

“I can,” Daenerys asserted. “The lies could be emanations of the North’s weakened state. I’m as much a threat to your newfound independence as I am to Cersei’s threadbare hold on Westeros, so why not conspire against me? At least, with the status quo, you know what you’re up against.” 

 

“We are all up against an army of the dead that will kill everyone and destroy everything if we don’t stop them together. We aren’t asking for you to pull back your forces against us. We are asking you to help us fight them,” Sansa fired back. A little more aggressive than she’d practiced on the long journey here, and Daenerys did not take well to it. Unable to help herself, she sneered lastly, “However if you’d rather sit upon a throne of bones, than you’re just as much like your father as I expected.” 

 

Sansa damn near expected steam to flow from the Queen’s nose as she fumed. When the Queen finally spoke, it was the low droll of someone whose mind was already made up. 

 

“You expect me to abandon my efforts to finally take back what is my birthright, all to help you hunt down creatures out of some children’s story?” she said, incredulously. 

 

“With all due respect, your grace, winged reptilian beasts that breathed fire used to be in my children’s stories. The very ones that circle this island as we speak,” Sansa goaded her. As soon as she said it, she wished she could take it back. She hadn’t meant to be so flippant, but days without a decent night’s sleep and a healthy dose of Northern pride were a dangerous combination. 

 

Daenerys, on the other hand, was blinking, pursed lips and silent for the first time since they’d convened. She fidgeted with the arm of her throne, wrestling between offense and, if Sansa wasn’t mistaken, perhaps admiration. 

 

Sansa never got to find out which it was, due to the unfortunate timing of an urgent matter delivered by Lord Varys. Another face from her nightmarish stay in King’s Landing that she wished she could erase. His gaze hung on her for a beat as he trailed behind the Queen, offering a slightly bowed head for a beat more. 

 

The Northerners were ushered into their quarters, where they were encouraged to wander for the remainder of the evening if it suited them. Ser Davos offered his company upon request, however until called upon he would retire to his room. Sansa too felt the pull of a stationary bed in a warm, albeit cavernous, room. She was halfway through turning down the sheets when a knock echoed jarringly throughout her chamber. 

 

She barely had time to wrap a complimentary silken robe around her nightgown before someone was pushing the door open and entering the room. 

 

“Lady - oh, my apologies, Lady Stark,” the woman offered, turning her gaze downward dutifully. 

 

“No, it’s alright… Missandei isn’t it?” Sansa asked. At her name, the woman smiled and seemed to soften. 

 

“Yes, that’s right,” she confirmed. “I’m sorry to disturb you as you prepare for bed, but the Queen requests your company in her chambers.” 

 

Sansa scoffed, “Now? It’s a bit late, isn’t it? Does she really want to meet with me, or is she going to actually feed me to one of her dragons? Because if so, I’m not getting dressed again just to die.” 

 

It was apparently the wrong thing to say, considering Missandei’s look of abject shock. 

 

“N-no, my lady, you are her guests. The Queen would never just…” she tried to argue, but Sansa took a step forward, holding up her hands up to stop her. 

 

“It’s just a joke, my apologies. Where I’m from, you have to find humor where you can, as northern winters aren’t very forgiving,” Sansa explained, with a shrug. It seemed to pacify Missandei, who breathed a laugh of her own. 

 

“There’s not much humor to be found in the life of a slave, I suppose,” she mused. 

 

“A slave?” Sansa repeated.

 

“Yes, or I was before Queen Daenerys freed me, and all the other slaves in my city.” 

 

“And yet you serve her, still.” 

 

“Willingly. I am not her slave, I am her advisor. I’m free to go at any moment, if I so desire.” 

 

“She has told you this?” 

 

“She has had no reason to, because I know it already. I believe it, just as I believe in her and the good she can do for the people of Westeros as their Queen.” 

 

Sansa stood still, brow furrowed as she absorbed all of this information. This was not something she would have guessed, given the icy reception Sansa received earlier that day. It certainly made her consider that there was more to this fiery Queen than what the rumors have told her. 

 

Missandei shifted restlessly on her feet, tilting her head expectantly. Oh right, she had been summoned. 

 

“I wasn’t joking about getting dressed. I’ve worn that thing for far too long,” Sansa declared, jerking her head back at the dress strewn over a chair. Missandei nodded with a genuine smile, this time. She moved to walk back into the hall, and Sansa gathered her skirt and followed. 

 

As they approached the gargantuan, dragon adorned doors to what could only be the Queen’s chambers, Missandei turned to Sansa one last time. 

 

“I would be wary of humor with the Queen, Lady Stark,” she advised, “She too is rather new to it.” 

 

“Duly noted,” Sansa said, with a grateful nod. 

 

The door was pushed ajar, and she was left alone with the Dragon Queen on the other side, waiting for her. Or, perhaps, a dragon poised and ready to turn her into ash the second she stepped through the archway. 

 

There was neither a Queen or a dragon, however. As Sansa slipped through the door and pushed it shut behind her, she almost didn’t notice the wisp of white gold hair swallowed by the blood red velvet couch. The head turned, and something about those lucid eyes now framed by free-falling waves was utterly disarming. Inviting, even. 

 

“Lady Stark, I appreciate you accepting an invitation so late in the evening. Would you care to join me?” came the verbal invitation. Sansa nodded, and chose a veridian armchair to perch on as she felt the Queen watch her every move. It was at a respectable distance, to not assume that this was a casual meeting. Although, the shapeless, pleated silk number Daenerys was sporting was far more casual than anything Sansa had owned in King’s Landing. 

 

“How may I be of assistance, your grace?” Sansa offered. More so because the silence was becoming a bit unbearable, as was her anxious anticipation. 

 

“At this hour? I ask nothing more than your company and conversation,” she answered coolly. “Wine?” 

 

The Queen leaned forward to lift an exotic looking carafe that Sansa hadn’t noticed before. Berry red wine sloshed into two glasses, and one held out to her. 

 

Perhaps sensing some trepidation, Queen Daenerys added, “I brought it with me all the way from the East. Mereen puts all the Westerosi wine to shame, so I’ve been told.” 

 

Sansa smiled fondly and took the wine, piping up, “It wouldn’t happen to be Lord Tyrion who told you that, would it?” 

 

The Queen returned the smile, and said, “So it would. He’s told me of your… history.” 

 

“I bear no ill will towards him, if that’s what he’s worried about. Of everyone I was held prisoner by in my life, he was by far the kindest and most respectful, if not a prisoner himself,” Sansa remarked. 

 

A fleet of emotions seemed to flit over the Queen’s face at such a loaded statement, but she settled on understanding, and told her, “He will be very relieved to hear that.” 

 

Another bout of silence, and Sansa needed a break from the Queen’s inquisitive stare. She took a healthy sip of wine to try and quell her nerves, which turned into two sips. 

 

“Lady Stark, if I’m not prying, who else has held you prisoner besides the Lannisters?” Queen Daenerys asked, voice softer with a twinge of nervousness. Both that and the question took Sansa by surprise, as that was not the sort of conversation she was equipped to have this evening. 

 

“I’m afraid that’s not a pretty story, and it depends on what you’d consider a prisoner. I’ve learned that there is more than one kind of captivity one can find oneself in,” Sansa spoke carefully. A sudden deluge of memory hit her, and she was sure the sadness showed on her face. She tried to bury it in her wine glass with a shaky gulp. 

 

“I have come to learn that as well,” the Queen said solemnly. Perhaps it was the flickering candles that offered pitiful light to the room, but Sansa could have sworn she saw the same shadows of sadness on Daenerys’ features, if only for the second she allowed them. 

 

“I apologize,” the Queen said suddenly, sitting straighter, “I didn’t mean to sour the conversation. I actually am curious about something, and perhaps you can explain. How did your brother manage to defeat the Bolton army and retake Winterfell? Last I heard, the Boltons had a strong hold on the north.” 

 

“He didn’t,” Sansa stated, a wry smile worked its way across her cheeks. “I did.” 

 

As Sansa spun the tale of how she not only leveraged her family ties, but also the political acumen she’d developed, she watched Daenerys’ eyes widen with intrigue. Their rapport became far more casual and demeanors relaxed, in part due the quickly diminishing wine. Mostly, Sansa admitted only to herself, because of how utterly validating it was to share her own clever outmaneuvering and not be overshadowed by the dumb luck of her half-brother. 

 

At some point, Sansa had either been invited or had been forward enough to join the Queen on the plush couch that she lounged on. Either way, there she sat, polishing off the last of the wine in a fit of giggles with Daenerys smiling fondly. Both of their feet tucked under their dresses and chests brimming with mirth. 

 

“Well, Lady Stark, it is a mystery to me why you weren’t named the Queen in the North,” the Queen said. 

 

“Ah, call me Sansa, please, and that’s the way of men, isn’t it? They only ever sing songs about the heroes that charge blindly into battle,” Sansa lamented. 

 

Daenerys scoffed into her wine, and shook her head, growling, “Yes, heroes. Always getting themselves killed over their own nobility. A dead man is no good to me, noble or not.” 

 

“The way I see it, a man is no good to you at all, your grace. You’ve come this far on your own,” Sansa suggested. Had she been less flushed with wine, she might have panicked at her boldness. The Queen didn’t seem to mind, however. In fact, she was eyeing Sansa in a particularly lingering way, as if she was appraising her.  _ Considering _ her. Sansa tucked a loose lock of hair behind her own ear and felt the heat of her cheek as she grazed it. 

 

“Yes,” Daenerys agreed wistfully. “My advisors will have me marry your brother if it could promise a political alliance, when I should really be marrying you.” 

 

Sansa was definitely blushing now, her pale skin burning under the appreciating gaze of the Queen. She had to admit, it wasn’t entirely unwelcome. 

 

“I… would advise against it, your grace,” Sansa managed to get out. The wine wasn’t helping, but it was better than trusting her lips to remain quiet. 

 

“Hmm, yes, you’re probably right,” Daenerys griped. “For all of it’s faults and herding people like sheep, the East was much more open about one’s choice of lovers than the shackles of Westerosi traditions.” 

 

Hold on. She wasn’t implying… no. The far away look in her eye as she stared into the crackling hearth begged for clarification. 

 

“Have you…” Sansa slipped, but she couldn’t even finish the question. The very idea was so unheard of, so shamed, and yet so very familiar to her. 

 

The Queen took pity on her and picked up the slack, answering, “Yes, I’ve taken a few women to bed in my travels.”

 

The fire was much hotter than it had been moments ago, Sansa swore it was. Her palms held a slick layer of sweat between her hand and the wineglass. She set it down in her lap, for fear of dropping and shattering both it and the moment that she’d stumbled into with one of the most dangerous women in the world. 

 

“Have you not?” Daenerys inquired, casually as if she’d asked her if she thought it might rain tomorrow. 

 

Sansa gulped before opening her mouth, shutting it, and deciding to just shake her head. A poor choice, as the wine had worked must faster than she’d thought and her vision swayed with each turn of her head. Her tongue felt heavy with words she desperately wanted to release.

 

The Queen withdrew just a little at Sansa’s response, smiling shyly to herself. 

 

“Ah, well, I should not assume,” Daenerys surmised. She ran her finger around the edge of the wine glass and Sansa could hardly stop herself from becoming hypnotized by it. “Forgive me-”

 

“No, I…” Sansa started. The Queen’s finger was frozen mid-circle, and her lips parted in anticipation. Gods, she must stop looking at them, as she was sure she wasn’t subtle. They looked so soft, full and tinted just a touch by the wine. 

 

“Sansa…?” 

 

She snapped her eyes up to the Queen’s and felt herself slipping. 

 

“Some women like pretty girls,” she blurted out. Daenerys furrowed her brow inquisitively, but waited patiently for Sansa to elaborate. She tried to. “There was… someone told me that, once.” 

 

Understanding washed over the Queen, and she nodded slowly, asking diplomatically, “Someone who was important to you?” 

 

Sansa knew what she wanted. She was too drunk and too tired to think of a clever way to talk herself out of this, so she just let her have it. 

 

“Yes, she was.” 

 

They were close, Sansa realized. Less than an arm’s length away from each other as the velvety fabric of the couch cocooned them. She felt warmth and affection for this Queen. After all these years, she’d like to think she’d grown to possess an excellent judge of character, but Sansa was nothing if not always doubtful of herself. She wondered if there would ever be a day when she could be sure of what she spoke and thought and not fear her miscalculations would come to slit her throat as she slept. 

 

If she was being honest with herself, which she was trying desperately not to be, here, splayed across the velvet as the chamber of the Dragon Queen was the closest she’d come to that feeling. 

 

Sansa must have looked deep in thought, because said ruthless, fire-breathing Queen was stealing glances at her over the rim of her glass. It was so uncharacteristically girlish of her, and she was reminded of their shared youth. Sansa’s heart fluttered with satisfaction. She thought with the Queen in such good spirits, and particularly lush, now was as good of a time as any to try at this alliance thing one more time. 

 

“I never apologized for not warning you that I would be me coming in my brother’s stead. I’m sorry if you were disappointed in the North failing to honor your invitation as requested,” Sansa expressed. 

 

A toothy smile Sansa couldn’t read swept across Daenerys’ lips. Closer still, enough that she could almost feel the breathy laugh that followed. The Queen’s gaze fell to her lap. She was circling the glass again. 

 

“Surprised, perhaps,” Daenerys amended her, reaching out and settling her fingers atop Sansa’s hand that laid forgotten on the fabric of her nightgown, “But not disappointed.” 

 

Sansa watched as Daenerys moved her fingertips along her boney ones, feeling the faint calluses. From clutching the coarse scales of her reptilian children, no doubt. A frisson of fear mixed with thrill stroked her spine deliciously. She was poorly staving off the urge to do something, but she couldn’t think of what. The fluttering in her chest propelled her muscles and her bones forward, forward, forward. 

 

Before she could give in, Sansa felt the knuckles of Daenerys’ free hand lift her chin. Instead, she let herself melt into the unrelenting warmth of her stare, now unbearably close. 

 

“I’m afraid I’ve kept you from sleep for far too long, and after such a long journey,” she said just above a whisper. “Forgive me for my poor manners.” 

 

Sansa’s mouth was far too dry to speak. So she smiled instead and nodded. She followed suit as the Queen stood and took the bone dry glass from Sansa’s hand to place it on the table. 

 

Once at the doors to her chamber, Daenerys faced her and said, “Thank you for your company tonight. Sleep well, Sansa Stark.” 

 

“Sleep well, your grace,” Sansa reciprocated. 

 

On the walk back to her quarters, Sansa hazily noted that on her way out, only when the guards had pulled the hulking doors wide enough to admit her through did Daenerys finally release her hand. 

 

\-----

 

The following morning, she was allowed time to dress. A statement that Missandei had fashioned into a joke of sorts, to which Sansa genuinely laughed. She was led to breakfast, where the Queen was joined by several of her advisors for the meal. Sansa sat at one of the two empty place settings at the opposite head of the relatively small table. Sir Davos plopped down at the other. 

 

After being served from the mountains of meats and fruit, the Queen struck up conversation. 

 

“I trust you slept well, Lady Stark,” Daenerys called to her from down the table. Gone was the warm, giggling girl Sansa had spent the evening with. Her regal facade was back in place, albeit less icy than before. Sansa counted that as progress.  

 

Swallowing a grape, Sansa replied, “Yes, your grace. I don’t sleep very well on ships, so it was most welcomed.” 

 

“And you, Ser Davos?” 

 

“Aye, slept like a baby. I apologize if I kept anyone up with my snoring. It echoes, I’m afraid,” he said jovially. “You probably suspected one of your dragons made it into the castle.” Sansa stared wide eyed at Ser Davos, gripped by her nerves. She vaguely recalled Missandei’s warning about the Queen’s humor, or lack thereof. 

 

Looking back down the table, however, she found a grinning and amused Daenerys. She seemed to take a liking to the Onion Knight, and who could blame her. Sir Davos had a certain disarming charm that could probably get a smile out of Queen Cersei, if she was capable of those. They rattled on for a few brief moments before the conversation turned back to more serious matters. 

 

“Our discussion was cut short yesterday, Lady Sansa. I must say your proposal was not exactly compelling, but I have considered a counter proposal,” Daenerys stated. She folded her hands on the table and leaned forward slightly, but not imposingly. “If you send word to your brother, the King in the North, and have him bend the knee and pledge loyalty to me and my place as rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, I will march north and he will have my army at his disposal to vanquish this threat beyond the wall.” 

 

It was a hell of a proposal. Had she been Queen in the North, she would have bent the knee right then and there. Jon, however, was not so logical. Faithfulness and righteousness clouded his judgement, and there was no such raven that she could send to get him to agree. She knew this. It was only a matter of time before Daenerys discovered this too. At the very least she could stall. 

 

“Your proposal is most generous, your grace,” Sansa began, with trepidation. “I cannot speak for my brother, but I know he can be reasoned with on his better days.” 

 

“Who better to urge him to find reason than you, Lady Stark,” the Queen said. It was in the realm of compliments, if you squinted. 

 

“Yes, but even still, asking a northern king to bend to a southern queen is no small request,” Sansa told her. “We’ve had bad luck with those sorts of alliances in the past.” 

 

The Queen sat back in her chair, plucked a berry from her plate, and confirmed, “You think he will refuse.” She wasn’t thrilled, that much Sansa could tell, but she was still listening. 

 

“Perhaps he will respond more quickly to that request if coupled with a gesture of goodwill,” Sansa spoke carefully. “One that would come at no cost to yourself, of course. Or at least, very little cost.” 

 

Daenerys’ brow quirked, and she drummed her fingers on the table. 

 

“I’m a firm Queen, but I am not cruel. Whatever your request of ‘goodwill’ is, you may ask it,” she said. 

 

“Dragonglass. It is the only material that can kill a White Walker. This island is filled with it in your caves and cliffs. Let us mine it so that, should Jon fail to bend the knee and we must fight them alone, we can at least stand a chance,” Sansa explained. “If we survive, such a gesture would show the North that you are not, as you said, a cruel Queen. And the North remembers.” 

 

Seconds passed like years as Daenerys stared her down from across the table. She was probably assessing the situation, and Sansa just happened to be in her line of sight. Still, the gaze of the Queen affected her just as it did alone in her chamber, and all the extra sets of eyes on her made that exquisitely uncomfortable. 

 

“Missandei, where is the nearest cave to us?” the Queen suddenly asked her advisor. 

 

Missandei, a bit thrown by the question, replied, “Oh, well, I believe it is just beyond the gates, my Queen.” 

 

“Very well, after breakfast, let us venture down to it,” Daenerys declared. Missandei nodded and the Queen resumed eating her berries. Sansa was not the only one at the table dumbfounded by what had just transpired. Both Tyrion and Ser Davos were altering between the Queen and Sansa’s blank stare. 

 

Clearing her throat more out of necessity than for attention, Sansa piped up, “Wait, so you’re considering it?” 

 

Daenerys paused with her berry poised at her lips, and hit Sansa with a look that had her wishing for more wine. 

 

“Creatures from stories meandering behind an impervious wall? I can’t entertain that as a serious request, but stones on my own island? I can at least go see them for myself,” she reasoned. 

 

Sansa sighed through her nose but nodded. Turning to Ser Davos, they exchanged smiles of relief and he proudly gave a subtle nod. Before tucking back into her meal, she dared to glance up at the Queen. She gulped when she found her doing the same, and blushed redder than the berry the Queen purposefully popped into her mouth. 

 

\---

 

At the mouth of the cave, Sansa was instructed to go first. Not out of malicious intent, but rather because this was her treasure they were hunting for. She should know what it looked like. 

 

Very well. Sansa took the torch from the Dothraki guard, lifted her skirt, and set forth. 

 

The further she ventured, the further her stomach hardened. Bare, stone walls. Not a glint of dragon glass in sight. The path twisted her around jagged corners, each one tighter than the one before. Her hope had just about run dry when by some stroke of luck, she spied a slim opening between two innocuous rock faces. It was a dead end, but with two steps into the room, the walls around her illuminated with glistening dragon glass. She slid her fingers over the hunks of it, buried deep in the stone, just to make sure she wasn’t mistaken. 

 

The Queen was equally in awe when Sansa brought her into the enclave. 

 

“So you were right,” she said in a hushed tone. “Dragonstone is a mountain of dragonglass. Of course it is.” 

 

Sansa wasn’t sure what that meant, but she kept quiet as Daenerys took her time examining the walls. 

 

Trailing her hands along the coarse edges of the stone, she called back to Sansa, “And you’re certain that this kills the White Walkers?” 

 

“Yes, your grace,” Sansa confirmed. “My brother and his brothers of the Night's Watch have used it to kill them before. Nothing else has worked, well, except fire.” 

 

At that, Daenerys peered back at Sansa reticently, but said nothing. Instead, she continued to walk the perimeter pensively, looking up at the veins of dragonglass climbing towards the darkness beyond the reach of the torch. Sansa patiently awaited the verdict. 

 

Spinning on her heel, hands clasped behind her back, the Queen finally addressed Sansa face-to-face. 

 

“Well, here it is, exactly as you said. Send to your brother that he can begin mining it as soon as he’d see fit,” she decreed. Sansa was still in a state of disbelief that she was allowing this, no strings. It was not the sort of politics that she was used to playing. 

 

“That’s all?” Sansa questioned. 

 

The Queen took a few steps forward to stand better in the light of the torch. She opened her mouth to respond but something over Sansa’s shoulder caught her eye and her tongue. She slowly strode over to what she had seen, Sansa turning as she passed her to see what had the Queen so curious. 

 

Behind her, painted and carved across the slab of rock were a trio of what appeared to be White Walkers. The rendering was a bit crude, but the icy blue eyes were unmistakable. Sansa joined the Queen at her side as she stood, quite taken with the mural. 

 

“These are them,” she stated more than asked, just above a whisper. 

 

“It appears so, your grace,” Sansa said. There were other smaller etchings; men with spears and swords, and smaller beings around the walls. She felt a pang of nostalgic longing for Bran and wished he was there, as he’d always been the one to listen most intently to Old Nan’s stories of The Long Night. 

 

Daenerys, on the other hand, was completely transfixed by the White Walkers, particularly the largest with an icy crown sprouting from his head. Sansa found herself watching her as her visage grew stricken with a newfound understanding. When Daenerys turned to her, Sansa held her gaze. 

 

“Yes, Lady Stark, that’s all. You asked for it, and so you shall have it. After all, if I am to be Queen, I can only rule over the living,” she told her. 

 

“Thank you, your grace. The North will remember your kindness and generosity in our time of strife,” Sansa accepted, smiling with relief that this journey had not been a complete failure after all. The Queen grinned, and laughed softly to herself. Looking down to steal a moment, she met Sansa’s eyes again with fondness that was almost arresting. 

 

“You’re a clever woman, Sansa Stark. One of the most intuitive and adept leaders I’ve ever met. The North is very fortunate to have you,” Daenerys informed her. 

 

Sansa blushed profusely, and said, “I am in good company, your grace.” 

 

“I’m very pleased to hear you think that,” the Queen replied. 

 

Sansa wasn’t sure what kept drawing her to this new Queen with such magnetism, but she was tired of fighting it. Given the wide, glassy eyes staring up at her, Daenerys felt the same. 

 

“Sansa, as you have asked the dragonglass of me, may I ask something of you?” the Queen requested, holding her gaze strongly even if the shakiness in her voice betrayed her. 

 

“Ask and you shall have it,” Sansa parroted the Queen’s words back to her, but with her so intoxicatingly close, Gods did she mean it. 

 

Daenerys’ tongue darted out over her lips before she asked, “May I kiss you?”

 

“Yes,” came Sansa’s uttered reply so fast that she feared the Queen hadn’t heard her. 

 

She had. A beat of comprehension, and Daenerys’ hand slid up her jaw and into the loose locks of her hair. Sansa closed her eyes as the Queen pulled her down so that when she craned her neck, she could meet Sansa’s lips with her own.

 

Oh, had Sansa never felt something so soft that warmed her body down to the tips of her toes in all her life. Even warmer was the sigh that seeped past her lips from the Queen, and it was as if she herself has breathed fire into Sansa. Drunk on the moment, she held Daenerys’ chin between her forefinger and thumb, opening her mouth to melt their lips together again. 

 

They reluctantly pulled back from their clandestine embrace, and Sansa wondered if the Queen could hear her heart pounding a mile a minute. Daenerys held her hand against her jaw, giving her cheek a few brushes of her thumb before drawing it back to her side. 

 

Sansa wasn't sure what the next course of action was, given that she wasn't entirely sure what had just happened. It seemed like a good thing. It  _ felt _ good, that's for sure. She tried the first thought that came to mind. 

 

“I must leave for Winterfell tonight,” Sansa muttered. A stupid thing to say, and a definite mood killer. “The North will surely burn it self down over petty squabbles without it’s Wardeness.” 

 

“It’s a shame. I’ve grown fond of her,” Daenerys confessed, forlornly. “Perhaps when both our wars are won, we may meet again under less dire circumstances.” 

 

“I would like that very much, your grace,” Sansa said. 

They allowed each other a few more moments to hold onto whatever they'd formed in that cave, hands clasped together, before deciding that if they waited any longer, the guards would storm in, assuming one had killed the other. 

 

\--

 

The celebration at the end of the Great War was brief and frugal for Winterfell, as winter paid no mind to affairs of men. The flicker of the foolish child left in Sansa had hoped that, like in the tales Old Nan has spun for her and her siblings, the long winter was somehow tied to the army of the dead. Now that they had been extinguished, perhaps she would wake the next morning, still full from the wild boar she hadn’t tasted in months, to a thawing spring. 

 

No. Unlike her siblings, magic had never swung in her favor to ease her suffering. 

 

Outside her window, the snow continued to besiege the castle. The hundreds of lives lost to the Great War did make it easier on their grain and food stores, as morbid of a thought that was to entertain. Still, with no indication of winter’s end, these days Sansa maintained a steady hum of anxiety as the stores slowly shrank. She kept on a brave face for her people, as her father had taught her by example. However, the people didn’t hide their fear and growing desperation, as they too understood the finite amount of supplies beneath the castle. The only promise of hope for her poor northerners, and Sansa herself, was that this morning the first round of relief supplies was set to arrive. 

 

It had been one of the first decrees Queen Daenerys had made, to send southern resources to aid the cold-stricken North. Every 3 months, a train of wagons and carriages would transport grains, fruits, meats, and vital supplies from the Reach to Winterfell until the winter’s end. The Queen had stated that the shipments would not make the North as bountiful as it had been in the summer. However, Queen Daenerys declared herself both the ruler and protector of all seven kingdoms. As long as she reigns, no man, woman, or child within her kingdoms will go hungry if they are unable to feed themselves. 

 

She’d relayed this to Sansa via a raven, but nothing else, much to Sansa’s dismay. She had been spared the grisly details of Daenerys’ battle at King’s Landing for the throne, and for that she was grateful. Daenerys alive and well was all the news she needed. And yet, as much as she hated to admit it, she did pour over the scroll that evening for anything she might have missed that could refer to their stolen moment in the cave so many months ago. In the rare moments that she was not beleaguered by the pressures of her position, she could think of little else but that brief embrace. The warmth of the Queen’s skin. The taste of summer berries still on her tongue from that day’s breakfast. 

 

Not to mention the hopeless, juvenile ponderings of whether the Queen thought of Sansa as often as she thought of her. If so, how  _ did _ she think of Sansa? Does she remember their brief time together as fondly? Does it haunt her in the moments before sleep like it does Sansa? 

 

She hated herself in those moments for being such a child. Daenerys was the Queen now. In reality, she’d always been the Queen destined for the southern throne and Sansa had a lifetime of duty to her childhood home. She had chosen it, even sought refuge in it, and it was a choice she did not regret. 

 

Although, that was before she had met the Mother of Dragons. She almost wished she had insisted Jon answer his own stupid summons. Let the Queen remain nothing but a silvery silhouette of a woman astride a dragon flying overhead and out of Sansa’s reach. 

 

“My lady, forgive my intrusion, but the supply shipment is on the horizon,” one of her councilmen informed her. 

 

“Yes, I will… be down shortly. Prepare the welcome party, my lord,” Sansa instructed him, to which he nodded and shut the door. 

 

Sansa stood at the mirror, flushed with nerves. The one piece of information from the Queen’s scroll that did interest her was that the Queen had pledged to escort the first shipment herself. It was purely diplomatic, this visit; nothing more than a political gesture to reward the Starks and the Northern houses for all they’d sacrificed to secure the Iron Throne from the Lannisters. 

 

Still, Sansa’s mind ran a mile a minute. What would she say? Should she be cordial and respectful? Should she kiss her hand as any male suitor would? 

 

Stupid. Sansa herself knew how much she detested when someone took her hand without an invitation. And what’s more, she was hardly a suitor. She was a fleeting moment of lust to a Queen with every powerful, wealthy lord throwing themselves at her. What could the Ice Queen of cold and filthy Winterfell offer the woman who brought dragons back from extinction? Pickled turnips and a rabbit’s pelt? 

 

Sansa scoffed at her reflection. Don’t be an idiot. The people will depend heavily on these quarterly shipments. Any misstep towards the Queen could jeopardize the lives of thousands. 

 

It was no use, though. As she stood at the forefront of the welcome party outside the gates, just the sight of Drogon’s black, sleek body cutting through the white snowfall made Sansa breathless. The train of wagons pulled into the courtyard as the great beast circled overhead. Once the final cart wheeled through, Drogon hovered gloriously above the snow, his flapping wings sending gusts of snow every which way. With a mighty thud, he landed and the Queen dismounted into the leveled snow her child left in his wake. 

 

Sansa swallowed thickly before curtseying as the Queen approached, declaring, “The North welcomes you with our utmost gratitude. We cannot express how vital these supplies will be our survival, and how indebted to the crown we are for your generosity.” 

 

Upon rising back to her feet, Sansa looked up to find a small smile on the face of the Queen. 

 

“I’m very pleased to hear that, Lady Stark,” Queen Daenerys replied. “But it is less a gift than it is a fair trade for the Northern men you sent to the Reach to help harvest these very grains. You are indebted to no one.” 

 

“Of course, your grace,” Sansa said. “We’ve prepared rooms in Wintertown for all of your men. They are welcome to retire after their long journey and allow us to unload the shipment.” 

 

“They’ll appreciate that very much, Lady Stark,” the Queen noted. 

 

“And we’ve also prepared a modest feast for your company this evening, and yourself if you wish to attend,” Sansa continued, practiced and paced.

 

“It would be my honor,” the Queen acquiesced. 

 

“May I escort you to your chambers, your grace?” Sansa asked, trying to keep her voice even as if she were merely asking a stableboy.

 

“You may,” the Queen agreed. 

 

Sansa turned to the house Lords that flanked her stoically, and dismissed them. The Queen turned to nod at Drogon, who at her signal, took to the skies to romp in the uncharacteristically agreeable snowfall of that evening. The two of them remained with no further formalities to exchange, alone and only a stone’s throw from the gate. 

 

Sansa tried not to gawk, but stark against the snowy expanse of the North, the Queen practically glowed like an ember. She was swathed in a magnificent white fur coat, her silvery hair dancing about her face, and her lavender eyes fixed on Sansa. Something about seeing her here, in Sansa’s homeland so comfortably, made her even more beautiful to Sansa than she had been in her memories. 

 

The Queen’s face broke out in a warm smile before speaking softly, “It’s good to see you again, Lady Sansa.” 

 

“It’s good to see you as well, your grace,” Sansa replied, shakier than she would have liked. Her hands flexed at her side, and she blushed under the Queen’s gaze, despite the icy wind that nipped at her cheeks. 

 

Queen Daenerys stepped forward in her direction, licking her lips and smirking slightly. 

 

“What was that about you escorting me to my chambers?” she prompted Sansa. 

 

“Oh, yes, of course, your grace,” Sansa stuttered, moving forward to extend a bent arm for the Queen to grasp. She took it and let Sansa lead her along the short path to the castle. 

 

Just before they reached the mouth of the gate, the Queen peered up at Sansa out of the corner of her eye and said, “You look even more lovely in the snow that I had imagined, Lady Sansa.” 

 

Sansa didn’t dare look over at the Queen, as the flush from her cheeks overtook her whole face. She smiled and quietly thanked her as they entered Winterfell, where the Queen broke off to begin greeting the people who’s shining faces lined the courtyard to welcome her. 

 

It wasn’t exactly a declaration of love, but at least now Sansa knew that the Queen  _ had _ thought of her since Dragonstone, at least once. 

 

\--

 

It turns out that the wagons the Queen had brought north carried far more than just food. In a display of genuine compassion, Queen Daenerys presented dozens of bundles of raw leather to the soldiers and watchmen to line their armor with as they continued to stand watch and guard the people against raiders and thieves. Trunks of furs were unloaded and handed out to the poorest families to ensure that despite the drafty cottages they huddled in, they would not freeze on even the coldest of nights. 

 

For her final presentation, the Queen called for all the families of the fallen soldiers who had given their lives to make Daenerys their Queen. To them, she offered enormous baskets of Dornish fruits and cakes and various delicacies that the humble people of the North had never laid eyes on or sank their teeth into. The Queen, grasping the hands of each widow or eldest child, expressed her hope that these gifts would both provide some comfort for their loss and ensure them that their sacrifice had not gone forgotten. 

 

By the time the Queen stood before the great houses of the North at the commencement of the feast, she had won the earnest admiration of even the grumbly knights of House Karstark. She raised her glass, smiling warmly upon the hall, and gave a short but rousing toast to the North for its unwavering loyalty, strength, and pride, vowing to serve them well as Protector of the Realm. 

 

If it was possible for Sansa to restrain her lingering stare of adoration towards the Queen, she made no effort to. When Queen Daenerys rose to go speak to some of her men a few seats down, Arya kicked Sansa under the table, nearly toppling the goblet she’d forgotten she was holding. 

 

“For god’s sake, Arya, just speak to me like a dignified person,” Sansa hissed. 

 

“Oh, me be dignified? You’re the one gawking at the Mother of Dragons like a stableboy with a tent in his pants,” Arya teased her, ripping off a chunk of meat from the turkey leg in her hand. 

 

“I am _not_ gawking,” Sansa bristled, “And for fucks sake, don’t be so crude, she’s the  Queen.” 

 

“I know that,” Arya said, unbothered by Sansa’s condescending tone. “You’re the one that needs reminding.” 

 

Sansa glared at her little sister as she took a healthy sip from her glass, shaking her head and muttering, “I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re implying.” 

 

“I can start a small fire in her chambers if you’re looking for a reason for her to find her way into your room tonight,” Arya offered, not missing a beat and tearing another hunk of crispy meat from the bone. 

 

“Need I mention yet again that she is the Queen?” 

 

Sansa’s voice was stern, but her gaze softened at the quirk of Arya’s brow. Though they were unrecognizable from the children who used to antagonize each other in that very hall, they remained sisters despite it all. No one else could level with her quite like Arya, and she wouldn’t change it for the world. 

 

Although, Sansa wouldn’t mind if Arya decided to chew with her mouth closed every once in awhile, at least in front of guests. 

 

As the castle sank into the hush of the evening, for the first time in what felt like months, the snowfall stopped and the clouds quietly retreated. A full moon filled the courtyard with pools of silvery light and made the otherwise burdensome snow banks glisten. Sansa knew it would be a short lived reprieve, but she deserved to indulge in the small moments of peace as they came. 

 

Emmie, her handmaid announced herself as she entered the room to tend to the kettle of hot water over the fire. Sansa met her at her vanity where she poured the water gently into the basin. Thanking her as she left, Sansa began running the damp cloth along her brow and neck. She was about to call for her handmaid to bring her the dry towel she had forgotten, when she heard a rap on her bedroom door. She really was an attentive girl. She had a mouthful of praises for the girl when she pulled the door open. 

 

No Emmie. Instead, the Queen stood before her in the candle-lit hall. Unaccompanied, in a dressing gown with her hair draped like silk over her shoulders, adorned with a crown of braids. Sansa merely stared, unprepared with her mouth agape and Arya’s voice mocking her from the back of her mind. 

 

“I… hope I’m not disturbing you, Lady Sansa,” the Queen began, “but I was wondering if you would allow me to speak with you privately.” 

 

She subtly peered around Sansa into the room to see if she was alone after all, and Sansa realized that she’d probably left her standing in the drafty corridor for far too long. 

 

“Yes, I’m alone, of course. Please come in, your grace,” Sansa said hurriedly. She stepped back to allow Queen Daenerys to enter her chambers, and went about fussing with the mess that she only noticed now. She shoved books into the shelves and tried to tidy up her vanity as quickly and gracefully as she could manage, which was not very graceful at all. 

 

She didn’t have any wine to offer the Queen at this hour, not without arousing suspicion. Turning around with a carafe of water and two cups in hand, she noticed the Queen toying with the embroidery on Sansa’s cloak hanging by the door. Deep, emerald green wolves ran in perfect succession along the fur trim of the garment. 

 

Although Sansa stood mutely and still, the Queen could feel eyes on her and spoke first. 

 

“Did you make this yourself? It’s magnificent.” 

 

“I did. There aren’t many ways to occupy yourself with when you’re snowed in for weeks at a time,” Sansa said, explaining away the compliment. “Busy hands are warm hands.” 

 

They fell into silence again. Sansa adjusted her grip on the cups in her hand, promptly remembering their purpose. 

 

“Oh! May I offer you some water? It’s all I have at the moment, I’m afraid. I can send for some…” Sansa rambled, but the Queen took a step forward and laid a hand on her arm. 

 

“I’m quite alright, thank you,” she assured her, with a warm smile. “Can we sit?” 

 

Sansa nodded, and went to put down the pitcher and glasses back on the table. Upon turning back around, she found the Queen not in one of the chairs by the hearth, but perched on the end of her bed. She appeared small and snow white against the earthy expanse of furs on the ancestral Stark bed. Sansa swallowed thickly before slowly making her way over to join her, sitting at a respectable distance with hands folded tightly in her lap. 

 

“What can I do for you, your grace?” Sansa offered, her voice just loud enough for the Queen to hear. The familiarity of their meeting quickened Sansa’s heart. Maybe it was the same crackling fire, with them both dressed down in the same soft robes, but Sansa swore the Queen was looking at her with the same imploring, wide eyes as she had that night on Dragonstone. 

 

This time, there was no wine. No threat of war or mass destruction by an otherworldly force. They had all the time in the world, and the Queen was certainly taking it. She shifted on the layers of furs, combing her fingers through the longer tufts and training her focus on them as she spoke. 

 

“I must be honest with you, Sansa,” the Queen began softly. 

 

Sansa’s heart plummeted. Always the fool. By now, after everything she’d learned, she should know better. 

 

“I wasn’t needed as an escort for the shipment,” she continued. “But I insisted. Personally delivering gifts, breaking bread with Northern Lords, I insisted that it must be me who came bearing this goodwill. It would be best to begin my reign having a strong relationship with the North.” 

 

Sansa gritted her teeth as she waited for the hammer to come down. She must have done something to soil this relationship. Arya, maybe, or perhaps one of the Lords had offended or threatened the Queen. What would her father have done? How would Ned Stark fix this? 

 

The Queen carried on, oblivious to Sansa’s inner turmoil, “Those are the reasons my advisors believe I came here for. And they are not wrong. I am here for those gestures and offerings, and it is important that I, and I alone, be present for them. What they do not know, however, is that my true purpose for making this journey is to see you.” 

 

At her final words, the Queen peered up at Sansa from her ministrations with the blanket. Sansa was unaware of what exactly her face was doing, but given the Queen’s nervous smile, it probably possessed a look of pure shock. She remained motionless as Queen Daenerys slid her hand along the blanket to find Sansa’s, which she took gently and lightly brushed her thumb across her knuckles. 

 

Sansa’s lips parted as her jaw slackened in the charged silence. This could go one of two ways, and she wasn’t prepared for either. 

 

“Sansa Stark,” the Queen murmured like a prayer, “I’ve thought of our time together at Dragonstone nearly every night since you left. Despite the end of the war, there is still much to be done as a new Queen. Day in and day out, I’m meeting with councils and Lords and tradesmen and there is no room for distractions, and yet the memory of you relentlessly distracts.” 

 

The Queen’s hand trailed up the sleeve of Sansa’s robes, and beneath the wool she could feel the ghost of her fingertips. The frisson that ran up her spine was enough to keep her quiet for just a moment more. She had to hear the words first. The admission, the request, or whatever form they will take. 

 

“I had to see you,” came the fervent whisper from the Queen. Her hand found Sansa’s again and she threaded their fingers together. “I didn’t want another raven or messenger promising me your wellbeing, I just had to see you with my own eyes to make sure you weren’t…” 

 

For a moment, something dark overtook the Queen’s mind. She crumbled slightly into despair, gemstone eyes welling up. She bowed her head to collect herself, and Sansa had never seen her look so small and afraid. It was as if she’d glimpsed at a precious secret that the Dragon Queen was no more than a young girl forged from responsibility and expectation, and yet has never known choice.

 

Sansa knew that life well. 

 

“Forgive me,” the Queen said, “but I’ve lost so many others for whom I cared for and I’ve grown to expect it. I just… I’m not fond of making a fool of myself. If I’ve misread your intentions then I’ll leave, no offense taken. Just tell me if you… care for me as well?” 

 

“You are my Queen. Of course I have great love for you, your grace,” Sansa recited. Out of duty or habit, probably both, but she instantly regretted it at the crestfallen look on the Queen’s face. 

 

“Of course, Lady Sansa. I understand,” she conceded. 

 

The moment was rapidly slipping through Sansa’s fingers, quite literally. The Queen withdrew her hands, leaving an icy chill across Sansa’s skin. 

 

“Your grace, I’m sorry, I…” 

 

“It’s alright, you don’t need to apologize.” 

 

But she wouldn’t look at her, and had begun to hurriedly gather the skirt of her robes to stand and leave. Sansa had always been a woman of action, and no better time for that to shine through than the present. 

 

Reaching for the Queen’s hands full of silk, she called out, “Dany, wait.” 

 

The nickname froze the Queen completely, and Sansa hoped it was for the right reasons. She nudged her hands into the Queen’s fists, freeing the robes and pulling her to face her. Gods, wasn’t she lovely. Expectant and wide open for Sansa to say or do whatever she pleased. She hadn’t known what to say from the moment the Queen had stepped into the room, and she certainly hadn’t worked it out since. Desperate to buy time with whatever was being offered, Sansa did the next best thing. 

 

She kissed her. A hand cradling her soft jaw and the other clutching Dany’s hand, begging her to understand. Given the sigh that poured into Sansa’s mouth and the small, soft hand that came up to rest on her wrist, the Queen got the message loud and clear. 

 

Even if she did finally formulate something to say it wouldn’t have mattered, as once she started, she couldn’t stop kissing her. Dany’s lips were plush and pliant against her own, and oh so delicious. Sansa slid her hands beneath the nest of braids and let Dany’s tongue find its way into her mouth, tart and sweet from the evening’s wine and fruit. Her throat emitted a whine without her realizing it, but the Queen heard it. She drew back just enough to separate them, but remain within Sansa’s hold. 

 

The Queen seemed to be measuring her up in some way. Her lavender eyes searched Sansa’s face for something and she withered at what she found. 

 

“Sansa, you don’t need to… appease me if you don’t return my affections,” she stated. She attempted to put on a warm and disarming smile but it was tinged with sadness, as if she had just been struck by a particularly haunting memory. 

 

Sansa’s smile was genuine, and she was so overtaken by it that she looked down shyly at their hands entangled between them. She breathed a laugh, out of disbelief mostly. Of all the situations Sansa had walked into or been thrown into, this one was by far the furthest beyond her wildest dreams. When she lifted her head to address the subject of her sudden giddiness, she was met with a rather bemused Queen. 

 

“I kissed you because I wanted to, your grace. I have wanted to since we met, far too much and far too often,” Sansa admitted, with a reassuring squeeze of her hand. 

 

Dany squeezed back, nodding before she added, “That’s good to hear. I don’t want to be the sort of Queen who trades love for loyalty, and that if you decline my proposition that something will befall your house…” 

 

“What exactly  _ are _ you proposing?” Sansa prodded, cocking her head to the side with a smirk. 

 

“I’m not… not marriage, surely,” Dany stuttered. 

 

At that, Sansa laughed incredulously, exclaiming, “Surely?” 

 

“No, I didn’t mean… Not that I’d  _ never _ want to marry you, or that I wasn’t thinking of it at all… ” 

 

Sansa’s giggles bubbled over at the Queen’s vociferous attempts to avoid offending her. She cradled Dany’s cheek in her hand; a stressed, exasperated Dany. 

 

“I’m not worried about marriage, not at the moment at least,” Sansa told her. The Queen sighed and smiled, relief slackening her posture. 

 

“I’m not sure I enjoy this, caring so much about what you think of me,” Dany mused, sheepishly. “I also don’t know if I have anything to offer, if I were to propose anything at all. I didn’t even know why I left my quarters tonight or what I was going to say once you opened the door. The only thought I had was that I might get to kiss you again.” 

 

The Queen was as laid bare as she could be without removing a single piece of clothing. It was more than Sansa was able to process, talking of the future and what they would do when the morning came. What she did know was that her heart was bursting from her chest at the opportunity to have the woman who’d been occupying her dreams, in whatever way she could. 

 

“Surely you didn’t expect to come all this way for just a kiss,” Sansa dared to propose. 

 

Dany’s brow quirked and her lips parted in a tentative smile. 

 

“I am not foolish enough to ever expect anything from you, Lady Sansa,” Dany averred. She shifted forward, holding her gaze and toying with the coppery ends of Sansa’s hair. She grazed her knuckles along Sansa’s chin, uttering softly, “But I certainly hoped for more.” 

 

It was somewhere between an admission and a request for permission, but Sansa was beyond the point of parsing. All she had to do crane her neck an inch in Dany’s direction and the Queen surged forward.  

 

Everything, everywhere was Dany, Dany, Dany. The air in her lungs, the hands tugging her jaw closer, the hips in her lap. Sansa’s shy hands grew bolder with every mewel she drew from the Queen’s throat, gliding up her chest and down her back and pushing silk robes aside to reveal the porcelain thighs that tightened around her waist. 

 

Sansa let the Queen guide her back onto the bed, both of them clutching and clinging to skin like a flood of pent up want for the other, with maybe a drop of post-war desperation. She hardly knew what to do with another woman’s body, but Dany had no such hesitations. With every knowing touch and expertly placed kiss, she unraveled Sansa into uninhibited bliss. She tried her best to remember at least a few things Dany did to reciprocate them, but all she could seem retain was the name of her bedfellow that she sighed and gasped into the air.  

 

In the heady haze of it all, Sansa was still able to mark that before every untying of a robe or exploration of new skin, the Queen’s eyes found hers and her hands paused, insisting on permission over and over. To which Sansa always immediately kissed her, confirming  _ yes, yes, oh Gods please, yes _ .

 

\--

 

If Sansa thought the months following the surreptitious kiss in the cave had been agonizing, the months that followed their first night together felt like starvation. They hadn’t exchanged any ravens on the matter, out of fear that their tryst would be discovered before they even knew what to do about it. All Sansa had to prove to herself that it wasn’t a delicious dream were the ways her skin burned whenever she let herself sink into the memory. She could almost feel the trail of heat where Daenerys had touched her, kissed her, and l-

 

“What in seven hells is that?” 

 

Sansa tried not to glare at her sister, standing in the open doorway to her chambers. Of all the people in Winterfell, Arya was the hardest to keep such a secret from. 

 

“It’s a cloak for the Queen, a gift to thank her for her generosity,” Sansa explained the cloak in her lap and needle in her hand. 

 

“ _ Generosity _ . Is that what you’re calling it?” 

 

Clearly, there wasn’t much left to keep from her. 

 

“Get out of my chambers before I have Bran do his… whatever he does and tell me why your handmaiden found blood all over your cloak a fortnight ago,” Sansa half-threatened. She already half-knew, but tried to give her little sister the privacy she was irritatingly not getting in return. 

 

Arya shrugged and answered, “Hunting.” 

 

Sansa raised her brow and parried, “There hasn’t been anything alive in the hills to hunt for months now in this snow. Care to show me your trophy?” 

 

“I’d love to, but there isn’t time at the moment, I’m afraid,” Arya said sweetly, with a knowing smile. “You see, the Queen is here. Early, I’m guessing.” 

 

“What the bloody… why didn’t you say that before?!” Sansa snapped, standing suddenly and sending all her supplies to the floor in a clatter of needles and thread. 

 

\--

 

Queen Daenerys’ arrival was a much bigger commotion this time around. The once icy Northerners rushed gleefully to the streets of Wintertown to greet her as she rode past, so much so that she had to dismount her horse and walk among them. She shook every hand and thanked them for their welcome. She stroked the splotchy red cheeks of every child who clutched at her furs and asked about her dragons and if the snow makes her hair silver and if she brought any apples. She had, and she had the guards manning the wagon behind her hand out as many waxy and crimson apples as each child could carry. 

 

Sansa observed all of it from atop the Winterfell gate, with Arya standing at her side smiling smugly. She wasn’t looking at her sister so she didn’t exactly know if she was, but she could just feel it radiating off of her. 

 

“The Northerners seemed to have taken to her rather quickly,” Sansa remarked to fill the dead air. 

 

“You would know,” Arya goaded her. 

 

“Why do I try,” she bemoaned, shoving past her snickering sister to descend the lookout and finally greet the Queen at the gate. 

 

This time around, Queen Daenerys assured the Starks and lords of the North that she had heard there were robbers on the Kings Road. She elected to escort the resources herself in hopes that her dragon would scare the scoundrels off. How kind and thoughtful, they had all cooed. How they’ve never had a more selfless Queen. 

 

“Yes, it is truly our great fortune to see you again, your grace,” Sansa lauded. Daenerys gazed upon the Lady of Winterfell, far too long to be appropriate.

 

“I must admit,” she proclaimed, voice still strong and regal but eyes drinking Sansa in, “I can never pass up an opportunity to see the North and all its beauty.” 

 

Jon coughed conspicuously from beside her and Sansa tried her best to usher the group into warmer halls before her face turned as red as her hair. 

 

And anyway, there was a grand feast to be had. The panoply of fruit and cakes and meats the Queen had brought was gorged upon by Northern families who’d come as far as Karhold. All evening long, the monarch fielded gifts and expressions of admiration and appreciation for the supplies. She held each outstretched hand tightly between her own, spoke warmly and sweetly to every person and never showed signs of fatigue. It was a sight to behold as Sansa sat beside her Queen, and for that, and other more selfish reasons, she couldn’t look away. 

 

If the Queen noticed, she didn’t pay any mind to it. However every so often, Daenerys would glance over at Sansa from out the corner of her eye and not so subtly beam. 

 

After clearing the meats and before moving on to dessert, Sansa had her handmaidens present the Queen with her own personal gift. The two girls unfolded an endless wool cape, black as night save for the blood red and silver embroidery trim. Within the intricate needlework were dragons flying up and down the edges. The top was shrouded in a collar of the softest fur, white as snow and from the collar hung the signature criss cross of black leather favored by Northern lords. Within the straps on either side was stamped the three headed dragon sigil of house Targaryen. 

 

Wordlessly, the Queen thumbed along the embroidery and buried her fingers in the fur. 

 

“I hope it pleases you, your grace. If you’re going to be making your way up north during the winter, you should have a cloak to keep you warm,” Sansa stated. 

 

“Lady Stark this is beautiful,” the Queen marveled, turning her focus to it’s creator. “Is this your handiwork?” 

 

“Yes, your grace. The needlework is mine,” Sansa admitted. 

 

The Queen ran her fingers over the dragons once more before returning her gift to the handmaidens to bring to her chambers, noting more quietly to Sansa, “I’ll have to find more reasons to come to the North to wear it.” 

 

Sansa buried her blush in her wine goblet and murmured, “I’m certain you’ll find a few.” 

 

After the Queen excused herself from the table to mingle with her guests, Sansa caught Jon a seat down from her, eyeing her and having a bit of sulk. 

 

“Oh what, you too? Between you and Arya…” 

 

Jon barked a laugh and shook his head, drawling, “It’s nothing, I just thought I was the only one you made cloaks for. I’m feeling a bit less special, now.” 

 

“You’ll never be special to me, King in the North. You’ll always just be my brother,” Sansa informed him, but not without a well meaning smile. 

 

The look of genuine pride that overtook Jon’s face was more than she could have hoped for. He leaned over with his goblet outstretched. 

 

“To father,” he muttered over the excited din of the hall as trays of desserts trickled in. Sansa raised her own to meet them both with a clink of thick metal. 

 

“To father.” 

 

\--

 

Sansa nearly tripped over her evening cloak running out of bed to answer the rapping at her chamber door. They had all retired for bed, Stark and Targaryen parties alike, and Sansa wasn’t sure how to reach out to the Queen now. If she called upon her in her guest chambers, what if the Queen didn’t want her again and politely turned her away? What if in her time back at King’s Landing, she’d been courted by one of those wavy, chestnut haired coquettish girls from the Reach. Or perhaps an irresistibly dashing Dornish woman who could spear down twenty men for her on her Name Day. How could Sansa, Stark as was her blood but with sweet Riverlands hair and small features, compete with the parades of sun-kissed Southern women, and men, who no doubt rushed to King’s Landing to offer their favor? 

 

For her sake, she considered it best to leave Daenerys to do the reaching out. She had hoped, but not expected, a call late at night, as has become their habit. Her heart surely thudded louder than her footfalls as she stumbled over to the door. The anxious force with which she pulled it open blew her hair back. 

 

“My lady, I hope I’m not disturbing you too-” 

 

“No! No, no, of course not, your grace,” Sansa exclaimed loud enough to have a guard poke his head into the hallway. Catching her breath, she looked down at the silver tray Daenerys held up expectantly. On it were a dozen perfectly rotund sugar dusted cakes, with stripes of icing across them and yellow as canaries. 

 

“I’ve brought lemon cakes, or I was told these were lemon cakes,” the Queen announced. Sansa looked up from the treats to find the Queen’s brows knitted together and her eyes shining, hopeful and anxious. “I’m afraid I’ve never had them before so I’m at the mercy of the bakers in King’s Landing. I hope you find they’ve gotten them right.” 

 

Sansa did her best to suppress her grin, and said, “Please come inside, your grace, and we can both enjoy them.” 

 

Shutting the door behind them, Sansa followed her Queen to the small table by the fire and sat opposite her. After setting the tray down, Daenerys’ hands fussed with the edge of the table, betraying her calm visage. 

 

“You first, my lady,” Daenerys instructed her. 

 

“Share one with me, your grace?” Sansa offered. 

 

The Queen acquiesced and they both sampled a bite from their split halves at the same time. Instantly, the sharp citrus on her tongue and the rush of sugar to follow it were redolent of fourteen and rolling her eyes at unruly Arya over dinners in her father’s tower in King’s Landing. Dreaming of lemon cakes every day on sunny royal picnics in the Kingswood and a lemon wedding cake… 

 

Before Joffrey was a monster and her father a head on a pike. When her mother and brothers were just a few days ride up the road waiting for her and Winterfell was as safe and warm a home as she’d left it. The sweetness of her childhood overtook her and before she knew it, she had demolished the little cake. 

 

Daenerys had barely swallowed her first bite as she watched Sansa, a small smile creeping up her cheek. 

 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be so-” 

 

“No, please! I take it they were to your liking?” Daenerys inferred slyly. 

 

“They were just as I remembered. Do you like them?” Sansa deflected. She plucked another off the tray in an attempt to dam her mouth with something, should bittersweet childhood memories decide to come pouring out. 

 

“I do! I had a lemon tree outside my window in Essos as a young girl. Had I known they could be used to make these, I would have perhaps appreciated it more,” Daenerys exclaimed, swallowing another bite with her curious gaze fixed squarely on Sansa. “It’s certainly one of the sweetest things I’ve ever tasted.” 

 

Sansa suddenly regretting stuffing her face with cake as the Queen eyed her like she was the most delicious thing at the table. She proceeded to innocently eat her half of the cake as Sansa poured herself some water to wash down her suddenly dry mouthful. She did her best to daintily swipe her thumb across her lips to clear the crumbs, but Daenerys seemed transfixed by the motion. She sighed and the fire crackled as it consumed a considerable chunk of bark. 

 

“How did you come to know that I liked lemon cakes?” Sansa inquired. The thought of Daenerys insisting someone like Tyrion tell her everything he knew about Sansa had her feeling quite self satisfied. At the very least, their time together had been satisfactory enough for the Queen to spend her spare time summoning all the bakers in the capitol for some silly little cakes. 

 

“The usurper brought it up in one of our… chats,” Daenerys said cooly. “I mentioned you and amid other repulsive remarks, she mentioned your fondness for lemon cakes while you were there.” 

 

Sansa’s blood ran cold and the bits of frosting turned sour on her tongue. 

 

“Cersei? She’s still alive?” she asked with a snap. Daenerys squared her shoulders, as if preparing to have her authority be questioned, as it often was.

 

“Unfortunately for her, she is. She is our prisoner, wasting away in the dungeons as we speak, where she will spend the remainder of her days,” Daenerys stated. As Sansa nodded, her shoulders relaxed a touch. Less sternly, she pried, “I know of the atrocities her son committed against you. Was she as vicious he?” 

Sansa scoffed as she turned her icy gaze to the hearth, replying, “She had worse ways of bringing about pain for her enemies. Like a knife so thin you don’t even feel it as she slowly sinks it into your stomach. By the time you realize what’s happened, you’ve already bled out. If I’m being honest, I had hoped that she’d been scorched by dragonfire, reduced to nothing but ash and soot in the gutters of flea bottom.” 

 

She eyed Dany out of the corner of her eye cautiously, after such an admission. The Queen’s brow arched in mix of concern and simmering rage. 

 

Leaning forward with her jaw clenched, Dany snarled, “Had I known she had harmed you I would have burned Casterly Rock to the ground with her inside. There is still time for that if it would bring you peace.” 

 

It would, Sansa had no doubt about that. But a woman of nobility, such as herself, should not revel in the brutality of violence. What’s more, a simmering growl stirred within her, one she had felt only a few times in her life and did not care to deal with at the present. 

 

“Daenerys, I’m…” Sansa began, reaching her hand across the small table but falling just short of the Queen’s free hand. “I’m so grateful you care so much about the humble North. Enough to be so reckless with your life to protect our valuable supplies from robbers on the road.” 

 

Daenerys swallowed thickly and inched her own hand across the smooth, worn wood to cradle Sansa’s, disclosing, “There were never any robbers.” 

 

“I had an inkling,” Sansa surmised with a sly smile. One that finally had the Queen blushing and demure, pulling her hand back slowly. Sansa spotted a small smear of lemon filling on Daenerys’ bottom lip and felt herself move before she realized what she’d done, insisting, “Dany, wait.” 

 

Gripping Daenerys’ hand, Sansa gently tugged her forward. The Queen rapt and lips eagerly parted, Sansa lifted her free hand to hold her jaw in place. 

 

“You’ve got a bit of filling just there,” Sansa informed her, tapping her thumb on her chin. “May I?” 

 

Daenerys nodded so quickly it was nearly imperceptible, but Sansa caught it. She craned her neck to close her mouth around Dany’s bottom lip and with a teasingly quick swipe of her tongue, released her. Pulling back, she felt the warm puffs of the dragon’s breath come more rapidly. 

 

“Tastes even better,” Sansa whispered, and that was all it took. 

 

The table hissed as Dany pushed it aside to wrap her arms around Sansa’s shoulder and fall into her lap. Lips crashing and small hands buried in fiery hair, Sansa gripped Dany’s hips as she clung to her. The little whimpers tumbling into her mouth and the soft strokes of Dany’s thumb across her cheek. Sansa was alight with the feel of her, the taste of her. She was barely able to pull away long enough to urge them to move to her bed before her chair collapsed. 

 

No sooner did they hit the furs did they rid themselves of their robes, nearly tearing at the fabric. The press of warm skin as Dany sat astride her had them closing every gap left between them. She arched into the kisses trailing down her neck and strummed the ridges of Dany’s spine to the tune of her own gasps and sighs. Her hips pushed into Dany’s as the Queen’s teeth nipped at her nape and hands charted a map of her. 

 

Beneath her curtain of moonlight hair, Dany whispered “I missed you” and “I dreamed of you” with the sharp sweetness of the lemon cake still on her breath. Even more so was the taste of it on her tongue and lips with her fingertips like matches striking on Sansa’s skin. The last coherent thought Sansa had as Dany’s hand dove between her thighs was how glad she was to have something far better to remember the next time she tasted lemon cakes. 

 

\--

 

As Daenerys approached the farewell party at the gates, the jet black cape Sansa made flapped behind her in the morning breeze. A rare sun peeked out from behind an ashen cloud that caused the silver embroidery to glisten with every step she took. Gods, she was a vision. 

 

Sansa stood tall and proper, curtseying as she approached them and nudging her sister to do the same. However, she couldn’t suppress the affectionate smile the Queen reflected for a flash before addressing the court. 

 

More gratitude for supplies, hospitality, and wishes of safe travels. All the usual pleasantries, however sincere they are this time around. As the moment presented itself to formally bid her royal guest goodbye, Sansa stepped forward. 

 

“It has been an honor to host you at Winterfell, your grace,” she began cordially. “I hope you’ll join us again in the future whenever the winds of winter take you north again.” 

 

Daenerys nodded and said coyly, “I’m sure I’ll find a reason. The North has certainly proven itself worth the journey.” 

 

Sansa felt flushed and thanked the gods for the crisp winter air to blame it on. She took a half step closer and with a mixture of shock and thrill on Dany’s face, she looked like she expected Sansa to kiss her in front of all of Winterfell. The thought of how stricken the curmudgeon lords would be by the sight of it was enough to make her consider it. 

 

No, she shouldn’t. Not yet. 

 

Instead, she bowed her head with all the decorum of a moment of diplomacy, muttering, “The cape looks stunning on you, your grace. Inside I’ve included something to remember me by, should we not meet again for some time.” 

 

Dany furrowed her brow slightly, making to adjust her cape so she could peek at the underside. Sansa was certain when she found it as her brow quirked with the discovery. It was a loopy, silvery embroidered version of her name sewn right under the stitch of the collar. On the left-hand side, above her heart. 

 

Such a gesture must have had quite an effect on the young Queen, as she proceeded with little else to say. Mounting her horse, she did spare a parting glance back at Sansa that couldn’t have been mistaken for anything but pure adoration by anyone who saw it. 

 

\--

 

The third supply run was accompanied by a vicious winter storm. The unlucky men sanctioned with clearing the King’s Road worked tirelessly, often shoveling or ploughing the same stretch of road for hours on end just to keep the snow at bay. Sansa made sure to use any means necessary to compensate them for their labor. She even pulled food and wine from the royal welcome feast until it was reduced to a meager lukewarm welcome breakfast. Even more so, Sansa knew that the supplies destined for that road were a far greater gift than any jar of pickled carrots she could offer them. 

 

Her gift sat in the front carriage, or at the helm of it, rather, sidled up to the coachman. She was swathed in wool and furs and the black cloak Sansa had gifted her right up to her nose. Only her iridescent eyes gave her away. 

 

To inspire love in one’s people, you must show them you are willing to carry their burdens alongside them. Such was the Queen’s reason for joining the supplies even through such horrendous conditions, that she mumbled into Sansa’s hair later that evening. She nudged Sansa’s ear with the tip of her nose, eliciting a girlish giggle from the Lady of Winterfell. Drawing back, Dany gazed down at her with fondness. 

 

“You taught me that, you know,” Daenerys told her. 

 

Wide eyed, Sansa breathed a laugh and shook her head, averting her own gaze to Dany’s pale hands skating up and down her bare chest. The wind spat gusts at the windows but the crackling fire paid it no mind. 

 

“It’s just how it’s always been in the North. The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives,” Sansa recited, reticently. 

 

Daenerys eyed her silently, continuing her fingers’ absent minded ministrations. It was one of Sansa’s favorite things about her new bedfellow; how she valued a good bit of silence as much as she did. Not like Arya who was far chattier than you’d expect for an ex-assassin. Having stewed in her own tragic nostalgia for long enough, Sansa offered the explanation Dany was waiting for. 

 

“My father always told us that, whenever we would squabble over stupid things.” 

 

Dany gave her a slow nod and following Sansa’s lead, a small smile. 

 

“Your father was a wise and honorable man, from what I hear, even down in King’s Landing,” Daenerys tried to comfort her. Sansa always knew that. She’d resented him for being so damn honorable as he dug his own grave, but age had made her appreciate how hard it was to maintain such staunch morality. The unanimous respect it left in his wake certainly meant he had been a rare man indeed. 

 

“I’m sure your father was also wise. He was a king, after all,” Sansa offered, but a laugh bubbled from Dany’s lips. 

 

“A king, yes, but I’m not so sure about wise. The last thing he ever said was apparently ‘Burn them all.’ Not exactly inspiring to the people,” she muttered bitterly. A darkness flickered across Dany’s features, or perhaps it was just the candles about the room. Either way, Sansa didn’t care for it and she cradled the Queen’s cheek in her palm. 

 

“You’re nothing like him, Dany,” she assured her. The queen nuzzled Sansa’s hand and shut her eyes for a moment to bask in it. Her brows knitted together as eyes fluttered open again, fearful and unguarded. 

 

“I’m scared that I will be,” Daenerys whispered. 

 

If she was being honest with herself, Sansa shared that fear. The madness of her family coursed through the Queen’s veins, dormant, or perhaps just biding it’s time. Either way, the mad queen wasn’t here now. Just Dany; vulnerable and looking at Sansa like she hung the moon. So, she shook her head, slid her hand down to the nape of Dany’s neck and pulled her in. 

 

Sansa kissed her softly and deeply and surely. Her fingertips pressed into her neck to hold her close and she hummed as Dany’s body splayed across her own. Breathless, and a little bit desperate, Daenerys let Sansa show her how kind and just and good she thought she was. How deserving she was of the love of her people. How she’d already earned the love of at least one. 

 

\--

 

When Sansa woke with a start in the dead of night, drenched in sweat and heaving sobs, she flinched away from Dany’s touch. Whimpering and shaking, everything reeked of Ramsey. Everywhere and every inch of her was crawling and she felt like she might be sick. She barely registered being wrapped in furs as her eyes darted frantically about the room. 

 

Her dress laid out neatly. 

 

Her boots by the door. 

 

Wine on the table. 

 

Dany’s warm body, keeping at a distance on the far side of the bed. Her mouth was moving and Sansa shook the cotton from her ears to hear the words. 

 

“Y-you were crying and thrashing about I-I didn’t know what to… I thought I was hurting you I…I didn’t know how to help you... ” 

 

Dany’s hands stalled in the air, unsure where to land or what to do with themselves. She looked utterly terrified but Sansa was still coming to. 

 

_ She knew those hands. Soft and eager. Combing through her hair and slowly trailing down her spine. Hands that belonged to a Queen who would never harm her.  _

 

With each recollection, her sobs reduced to shaky breaths and her world settled once again, peaceful and undisturbed like dust on the mantle. Daenerys was still rather fraught, and on the verge of asking questions Sansa had been avoiding for so long. 

 

Gathering her courage, Sansa told her of her dream that was more memory than dream, sparing no detail. She watched Daenerys silently cry for her and when Sansa was done telling her story, she offered her own. Of her first husband and the violent and repeated loss of her innocence. It was no comfort to know Dany had suffered equally but it eased some lonely aching wound deep within her. Enough for her to reach out for Daenerys and beckon her back to her side. 

 

The Queen made no effort to slip under the furs with her, in an unspoken understanding of the need to be untouched for a while. Instead, she toyed with the ends of Sansa’s hair, blindly forming loose little braids. 

 

“I would make him suffer a thousand times in a thousand ways were he not already dead,” Dany declared. 

 

“How?” 

 

“How what? 

 

“Tell me how you would make him suffer.” 

 

A curious look hung on Dany’s visage in the scarcely moonlight room as she took in the request. Her jaw clenched and she looked away for a moment. A cold trickle of regret ran down Sansa’s spine in the silence. Before Sansa could take back her request, Dany smiled wickedly, licking her lips as she began. 

 

Sparing no detail, the Queen told Sansa all the methods of torture she would have Ramsey endure. The excruciating ways she would draw out his death. Days and weeks and months of pain so unfathomable he would wish he was dead. Each one more sadistic and barbaric than the one before. All the while, Sansa laid curled in the furs, captivated and soothed as if it were one of Old Nan’s bedtime stories.

 

Sansa knew a Lady of nobility such as herself should be horrified at the suggestion of such brutal violence. The mad dragon queen from the savage East, vengeful and vindictive. However this time, Daenerys offered to seek revenge for  _ her _ . She vowed to raze castles to the ground and turn all those who haunted Sansa into ash for  _ her _ pleasure. Her very own twisted and bloody knight errant. Flames filled her chest and the fearsome look in Dany’s eyes stoked them wildly. She was bursting with the sudden desire to have the Queen on her knees for her, pledging the world for her. If this is what madness felt like, Sansa couldn’t blame the Targaryens for succumbing to it so easily. 

 

And anyway, with enough suffering between them both to last a lifetime, perhaps it had been a few drops of madness that helped them survive. 

 

\--

 

“Would you let me braid your hair?” Dany murmured into Sansa’s neck, heavy with sleep and exhaustion from the night before. 

 

Sansa hummed and nuzzled her cheek against the downy tufts of hair on the crown of Dany’s head. 

 

“I wouldn’t mind,” said Sansa. The sudden chill on her collarbone signaled Dany’s rise and her own eyes fluttered open to the dim light of another winter morning. Somehow, with the entire castle bathed in grey, Dany’s hair still held it’s white gold glimmer. It cascaded freely down her back in waves so soft they were begging to be touched. The ends curled up at the small of her back, right above two dimples in which Sansa’s fingertips fit perf-

 

“What are you staring at? I can’t braid your hair with you lying down,” Daenerys quipped. Sansa guiltily whipped her attention to look up at Dany, who wore a wry smile that knew quite well  _ what _ Sansa was staring at. 

 

With nothing but a fur around her waist for warmth, Sansa let Dany transform her tangled tresses into uniform braids haloing her head. She hummed contentedly as slender fingers carded across her scalp. Dany made an effort to be meticulous, but certain moments Sansa swore were just the Queen taking a moment to worship her strands of fire. Scratching at her scalp to elicit soft little groans of appreciation. 

 

It had been so long since someone was so gently affectionate with her. The last time she could recall was probably her mother and she allowed the accompanying sadness hover and dissipate like a passing stormcloud. Besides, Dany was gripping her shoulders and grazing her lips against the shell of her ear. 

 

“Nearly done. Don’t move.” 

 

The featherbed shifted as Dany climbed off and padded across the room to her discarded cloak. She held her hands cupped around something Sana couldn’t see as she crawled up the bed to sit before her. 

 

“I felt so terribly guilty that you’d made me such a beautiful gift last time I was here, and I had nothing to give in return,” Dany recounted. 

 

“That’s not true. You brought me all those lemon cakes,” Sansa reassured her, but Dany shook her head, bemused. 

 

“A few cakes for a hand embroidered cloak? That hardly seemed fair, especially with the surfeit of riches the capital has as winter ravages the North,” Dany argued. She shuffled forward a bit and lifted the hand covering the other to reveal a silver pin affixed with a painstakingly sculpted dragon head. It bared its teeth while it’s two emerald eyes twinkled back at her. Sansa lifted it gingerly and turned it over in her own hand, feeling the weight of solid silver. 

 

“Dany, this is too much…” 

 

The Queen scoffed, “It’s nowhere near what you gifted to me. I mean, I had them remake it six times, sure, but I don’t possess the talent to make anything beautiful enough for you myself.” 

 

Sansa tore her attention from her stunning gift to find the Queen wringing her hands as she observed Sansa eagerly. Sansa couldn’t help but chuckle at the absurdity of it all. Her body bare but crowned with braids, accepting far too extravagant gifts in a secret courtship with the Dragon Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. Who, by the way, was rendered a nervous wreck before her. 

 

“Do you like it? Its pure silver and the eyes are emeralds for… well your house colors… since I thought you might wear it and from afar, maybe it might look like a wolf so no one will suspect you of… whatever it is the Northerners don’t want you to be doing…,” Dany rambled until Sansa took mercy upon her. 

 

She held her face between her hands and drew her in for a kiss laden with gratitude. Dany hummed into her mouth and Sansa breathed it in. They parted with a smack. 

 

“I’ll wear it every day, even if I have to keep it hidden,” Sansa mumbled against her lips. Dany beamed with a sunny grin. 

 

She slowly pulled it from Sansa’s grasp, and asked, “May I?” 

 

Crawling back behind her, Dany pulled together the last of her handiwork. She secured the crown of braids with the pin expertly, gathering the rest of Sansa’s hair over one bare shoulder to plop a kiss on the other. 

 

\--

 

Sansa’s Name Day carried on like any other day. Midway through breakfast, Arya did wheel Bran into the main hall with a little berry tart in his lap. They split it three ways and Bran smiled almost convincingly; his version of a gift to his once sister, she supposed. 

 

The rest, however, moved like clockwork. 

 

There was a meeting about castle finances and stores. The pickled and preserved stores were faring well. Grains and dried meats were running low but those always went first. The fresh stores from the Reach were being rationed much better this time around. There might even be some left before the next round of supplies reached the North. 

 

Finances were average, although for the dead of winter, Maester Wolken said that was far exceeding historical records. They’d managed to keep taxes reduced and in doing such have afforded the small inns and pubs in Wintertown steady business. Such little luxuries kept moral up and crime low. 

 

Then she held her daily open court for the public to come with needs or news or any other reason they may have to request an audience with the Lady of Winterfell. Needs were minimal, nothing that couldn’t be afforded. Lord Larence Hornwood, their legitimized bastard, would be taking a wife in a fortnight. A modest affair she needn’t attend, but she sent for the cooks to prepare and send apple cakes for the happy affair. 

 

It wasn’t until mid-afternoon that she retired to her quarters for an hour or two of peace. She shed her cloak to hang by the door and avoid any melting snow drippings on her bedroom floor. Shouldering the door open, she nearly tripped over a vase of flowers. Righting herself she noticed the entire floor, and every surface for that matter, was buried under a sea of flowers. Winter roses and summer daisies. Poppies and hyacinth and bushels of chrysanthemums. The table overflowed with snapdragons and bright purple violets formed a moat around her hearth. 

 

Her handmaidens were clever enough to leave a narrow footpath to her bed, where she flung herself dramatically and heaved a generous sigh. The room nearly suffocated her with the perfume of spring. 

 

Rolling on her side, she felt the crunch of parchment beneath her elbow. An envelope bearing the Targaryen seal sent her heart skipping. No sooner had she broken the seal did she nearly tear the envelope to pour over Dany’s words meant just for her. 

 

_ Happy Name Day, my lady. I did not know which flowers you liked, so I sent every kind they had in the Reach, Crownlands, and as far as Sunspear. Unfortunately, I could not find one as beautiful as my memory of you.  _

 

_ Yours, Dany _

 

It was almost comical to leave a note, as if Sansa wouldn’t know exactly who spoiled her with such a gesture. Nevertheless, she couldn’t suppress her lip-biting grin. She clutched the scroll to her chest and shut her eyes as dreams wafted into her mind of how the gardens of King’s Landing might engulf her and Dany as they strolled on sunny afternoons. 

 

Early the following morning, she woke before the maester to climb to the Raven tower where she scrawled her response to the Queen undisturbed. 

 

_ The flowers were entirely too much, but I absolutely adored them. If you really intend to spoil me silly, I dare say finding you in my room would have been a far better present.  _

 

_ The Lady of Winterfell  _

 

\--

 

The next supply run didn’t include a royal visit, much to Sansa’s dismay. Her and the Queen had maintained a steady correspondence, though often coded, but nothing to lead her to believe Daenerys would miss an opportunity to see her. She desperately wanted to hide out in her chamber and dissect their exchanged scrolls shoved inside a hollowed out book. Just in case she had in fact said something to offend the Queen. Something too brazen or assuming. Alas, she had a day filled with meetings and public service, a dreadful one with freezing rain and snow up to her knees. 

 

Sansa’s disappointment was apparently rather obvious, as it manifested itself in snippiness and irritability over breakfast. 

 

“Who pissed in your porridge?” Arya remarked. 

 

“I’m fine,” Sansa calmly rebuffed. 

 

“So you’re not going to lash out at us for the next 3 months just because the Queen wasn’t here to  _ relieve _ all your tension, are you?” Arya said frankly as she impaled her potatoes with her fork. 

 

“A little discretion wouldn’t hurt, you know,” Sansa hissed, turning on her sister sharply. Arya barely blinked. She stared cooly at Sansa and quirked her brow. Huffing, Sansa yielded, “She’s probably busy. She has duties to uphold and so do I.” 

 

Arya eyed her sister over mouthfuls of her own porridge. Sansa figured that if she was going to be glum about it all, she’d better get it all out at breakfast. She rather petulantly ate her meal in silence, sighing through her nose and smashing potatoes into mush. 

 

“Not even a raven to apologize?” Arya piped up. 

 

“ _ Not _ even a raven to apologize,” Sansa confirmed, not bothering to hide her disdain. 

 

Arya hummed as she ripped a hunk from her bread and chewed impolitely, muttering, “Bitch.” 

 

Sansa peered at her younger sister from the corner of her eye at the blatant act of treason, spoon frozen in midair. Arya looked up at her churlishly, tearing off another chunk of bread far too big to chew like a lady. Nobody else seemed to have heard it. The hall was cushioned with the hum of conversation and the scrapes of spoons on the bottoms of wooden bowls. Sansa allowed herself a snicker through her nose and smirked into her own bowl, trying not to lose her appetite as Arya spewed crumbs all over the table. 

 

Upon later reviewing the tallies of what was sent North, Sansa took some solace in the basket of peaches the Queen had included specially for the Lady of Winterfell. She hadn’t had such a delicacy since her childhood, as even the Reach found them difficult to grow. They were also an excellent excuse for her to return to her chambers to purportedly save them to share with her siblings. She really only intended to hide away and sulk. 

 

It was lucky that the basket was latched shut as it hit the floor as soon as Sansa opened her chamber door, then promptly shutting it hastily. Waiting for her on her bed was Daenerys, clutching the furs demurely to her bare chest and smiling wickedly. Kicking aside the forgotten peaches, Sansa shed as much clothing as she could as she strode the short distance to climb up the featherbed and pull the Queen in for a deep, hungry kiss. 

 

Sighing contentedly, Sansa stroked the back of Dany’s neck as the Queen whispered against her lips, “You said I would make a better gift, so Happy Belated Name Day Sansa Stark, first of her name, the Lady of Winterfell and Warden of the North.” 

 

How she had missed the way Dany drank her in with darkened eyes and delicately pushed her amber hair behind her ear. 

 

“How did you… I thought you didn’t want to see me,” Sansa told her. 

 

“I didn’t want your Northerners to see me, or my own court for that matter,” Daenerys explained, releasing a vexed sigh. “I’d run out of viable reasons for accompanying the supplies. A queen does have her share of affairs to attend to and I can’t be escorting chickens and wine across the continent whenever I please, apparently.” 

 

Sansa shook her head with a smirk and Dany returned it. 

 

“You let them tell you what to do?” Sansa taunted her as she flopped down on her back beside Dany. “Doesn’t sound very Queen-like.” 

 

Daenerys pursed her lips and slipped out from under the furs to straddle Sansa, pinning her hips. Her alabaster skin blanketed by her free falling silvery hair. Sansa tried to slide her hands up the thighs on either side of her, but Dany caught them and pushed them up above Sansa’s head. Holding them there had her hovering parallel to Sansa, not quite touching but so frustratingly close. 

 

“I let them advise me, yes,” Dany purred, releasing Sansa’s hands. They twitched with how much she wanted to enjoy her present, but she had a feeling the Queen wanted her to keep them there, so she did. Dany had moved on to dexterously undoing the laces of Sansa’s doublet. “I won’t, however, let anyone or anything keep me from you. Not as long as you want me here.” 

 

Dany pulled the laces open roughly and laid a kiss to her collarbone. 

“Like this.”

 

She nipped her way up Sansa’s neck to her ear.

 

“With you.” 

 

Sansa hardly realized the groan she’d released but she was rewarded with a kiss just over her fluttering pulse. 

 

“Then I suppose you’ll be hiding in the back of wagons for the foreseeable future,” Sansa breathlessly replied, pressing her palm to the small of Dany’s back to attempt to flip them. The Queen pushed her back onto the sheets, with a tut. 

 

“It’s your day, Sansa Stark. I’m meant to be your present, aren’t I?” Dany teased her, eyes alight. She leaned down and kissed Sansa gently, whispering, “Trust me, alright?” 

 

Sansa nodded, and Dany kissed her once more, tenderly and full of assurance, before she began to trail down her jaw. She nipped down her throat and branded her chest with open mouth kisses. Sansa’s breath caught when Dany traversed the slopes of her hips and sank her shoulders between her legs. Pausing, she looked up to catch Sansa’s eye; asking, always asking. 

 

Sansa could only manage another curt nod in such a state. Dany held her gaze as she kissed the inside of her thigh, while Sansa couldn’t quell the throaty noise that burst forth. Her skin singed from Dany’s touch and kiss. Most of all, the sly little smirk Dany wore as she tediously kissed her way up was surely going to haunt her dreams. 

 

When Dany reached her destination, Sansa’s breath was pulled from her lungs and she fell back into an entirely new kind of bliss.  

 

\--

 

Any moment now, the grey light of winter’s dawn would crawl up Sansa’s bedroom window. The candles had burned down to stubs and the fire was reduced to quiet, glowing embers half buried in ash and soon her handmaidens would come round to prepare her room for the morning. The remaining moments she had with the dragon queen, splaid as she was against her, peaceful and only hers, were slipping away like sand in her fist. As such, she couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t bear missing a single moment. 

 

How Dany slept like a log after she was satiated. On her stomach like a ragdoll carelessly tossed on the bed with one arm strewn across Sansa’s waist. It was so trusting and vulnerable, sleeping with her back to the door. Sansa envied her a bit, as she couldn’t bring herself to sleep that unguarded, not after everything. 

 

How she radiated such warmth that with Dany in her bed, they had no need for the furs even in the dead of winter. Perhaps the Targaryens really did possess the blood of the dragons. It certainly felt like lying next to her, skin pressed against hers in every way Sansa could manage, that wildfire ran through her veins or her ribs housed a smouldering hearth. She walked her fingertips across the expanse of her back, warm and tingly like bare feet on a hot sandy shore. 

 

Most of all, how small the queen was in Sansa’s arms. Literally, as Sansa could pull her in and envelop her completely with ease. Stripped of her voluminous gowns, messianic stature, and far from the 200 foot wingspan of her children, she was merely a girl. No older than Sansa, if even at all. Wisps of hair pulled loose from half-undone braids haloed her face. A few faint lines of raised skin marked her back where Sansa raked her nails a little too harshly. A dusting of faded freckles giving away her just recently faded youth. For all the godliness that she embodied to the seven kingdoms, here in Sansa’s bed she revealed herself to be startlingly human. 

 

Sansa resolved to commit it all to memory in hopes that the next stretch of time apart would be less unbearable for it. 

 

\--

 

_ By royal decree, Queen Daenerys of the House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, The Unburnt, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First men, Protector of the Realm, Breaker of Chains, and Mother of Dragons, requests the presence of House Stark at the joining of houses Tarly and Hightower. Lady Talla Tarly, Warden of the Reach, will wed Lord Humphrey Hightower at Highgarden in two and a half fortnight.  _

 

Immediately upon release from Arya’s fingers, the scroll curled back in on itself. 

 

“Let Bran read it,” Sansa told her. 

 

Arya scoffed, waving him off, “He probably already knows what it says.” 

 

From the other side of the desk, Bran blinked owlishly at her, but otherwise remained unmoved. 

 

“I told you,” he drawled, “It doesn’t work like that.” 

 

Arya sighed through her nose and flicked the now rolled up parchment over to his side. Bran watched it roll but made no move to reach for it. Jon, sat apathetically next to him, grabbed the scroll and handed it to him anyway. 

 

“I’ll need to leave tomorrow morning if I’m going to make it on time,” Sansa informed them both. 

 

Arya’s brow furrowed and she cocked her head to the side, arms crossed. 

 

“Hold on, it says ‘House Stark’ not ‘Sansa Stark’,” she affirmed. 

 

“So?”

 

“So, you just decided to accept the invitation for yourself and leave us behind?” 

 

Sansa leaned back in the chair and glared at her sister, unamused. 

 

“You’re saying you want to travel south for nearly a month to go to a wedding?” Sansa said. 

 

“Of course not. I hate weddings.” 

 

“So what exactly is the problem then?” 

 

“It’s the  _ principle _ of the matter. You’re the Lady of Winterfell, sure, but you’re not the only Stark,” Arya replied snidely and not entirely wrong. Sansa sighed and turned to face Jon and Bran, the latter taking an absurdly long time to read the short message. 

 

“And how do you feel about this?” she asked. Jon looked to Bran expectantly, but probably knew he’d fare better waiting for spring than for a reply from Bran. 

 

“I’m not much for fancy southern banquets, but I can keep you company if you’d like, Sansa,” Jon offered. 

 

“That’s very generous but not worth the long journey. I’m sure I’ll find someone to talk to,” Sansa thanked him. 

 

“Like the Queen?” Arya inferred. 

 

“Yes, like the Queen,” Sansa said cooly. “I’m sure she’ll be able to spare a moment, considering she invited me-” 

 

“Us,” Arya corrected. Sansa bristled as Arya blinked calmly, as if she had just asked her to pass the butter. 

 

“Invited  _ us _ ,” Sansa amended begrudgingly. Arya let a knowing smirk creep up her cheeks, which she exchanged with an equally amused Jon, much to Sansa’s chagrin. She sighed and turned to her younger brother, asking him, “And what about you, Bran?” 

 

Bran slowly raised his head from the scroll and looked at her as if she was nothing more interesting than peeling paint. 

 

“I don’t feel much of anything anymore,” he stated. 

 

The Stark siblings waited patiently for any further information from their brother but, as usual, got nothing but vacant stares. 

 

“Right,” Sansa said definitively, “Well, I apologize for not considering you, Arya. Now can we all move on?” 

 

“Was that so hard, sweet sister?” Arya goaded, quite pleased with herself. Sansa rolled her eyes allowed Arya a moment of smugness. 

 

“You know, I’m glad you’re feeling such a sudden urge to represent our house so publically, as while I’m gone, you’ll be acting Lady of Winterfell,” Sansa announced, to Arya’s visible dismay. 

 

Throwing her hands in the air, she protested, “You know I’m horrible at these things. Why can’t Bran do it?” 

 

Blinking almost as blankly as Bran, Sansa responded, “You can’t really be asking me that.” 

 

“Yeah, well, what about Jon?” she tried once more. 

 

“Sorry. Bastard,” Jon said, pointing to himself and not sorry about it at all. 

 

Huffing, Arya’s arms fell limply at her side. She stared, pleadingly, at her sister who merely shrugged. Sansa was well accustomed to the burdens of duty. If Arya wanted to stick around, she’d better get used to the occasional inconvenience. Additionally, she basked in the deeply satisfying bonus of a small victory in her never-ending battle of taunts with her sister.

 

“Alright,” she grumbled, “but do I have to wear a dress?” 

 

“Certainly not. Nobody would recognize you,” Sansa teased her. 

 

“Thank the Gods.” 

 

\--

 

It was an opulent ceremony, with House Hightower incapable of doing anything less for their youngest child. The great hall of Highgarden was swathed in silks and ribbons and practically blooming with white flowers. They spilled over banquet tables and hung from deep mahogany rafters like snow frozen in midair. What’s more, as the sun drifted across the afternoon sky, the storied stained glass windows bathed the flowers in a rainbow of hues. Margaery had been right about the castle’s unparalleled beauty. 

 

A pang of loss struck Sansa’s chest, but only for a moment. It wasn’t hard to imagine the beautiful woman waltzing across the floors, knowing well and good that she was breaking every man’s heart at every banquet. The prize rose of Highgarden.

 

“Are you alright, dear niece?” asked Lord Tully, seated to her right with a smudge of sauce on his cheek. 

 

Sansa smiled and decided not to tell him her woes, replying, “Yes, just ate a bit too fast, I suppose.” 

 

He grunted as he tore into another turkey leg and Sansa stole a glance to her left. Seated at the head of the table, the Queen sat in startling repose. Nursing a goblet of wine and draped in cerulean silk, Sansa discovered that Daenerys had been watching her curiously. She flashed a demure smile and the Queen’s lips curled into a broad one. Leaning forward, she reached out to lay a hand over Sansa’s. While her eyes darted nervously at the blatant gesture of affection in a room with no less than two hundred lords and ladies, Sansa allowed it. 

 

“Will you join me for a walk, Lady Stark?” Daenerys asked, innocently. The soft pads of Daenerys’ fingertips dusted the back of her hand oh so temptingly. 

 

“Of course, your grace,” Sansa replied instantly. She’d been unable to snag a moment alone with Daenerys until now and worried she might burst because of it. 

 

The Queen nodded, and suddenly rose from her seat. 

 

“Now?” Sansa exclaimed, immediately regretting her lack of volume control. The collection Lords at the table all paused their own conversations to be audience to the Lady who just sniped at the Queen. She sheepishly looked up to find Daenerys chuckling. 

 

“I’d prefer it if that’s alright with you,” she appeased her, good naturedly. “The gardens are far better to take in before sundown.” 

 

“Right, of course, your grace,” Sansa said, rising hurriedly to join the Queen and get far away from the disapproving glares of Southern highborns who already thought her a Northern barbarian. 

 

Stepping out onto the garden landing, the cacaophy of the castle’s festivities fell away and they waded into the quiet. The Queensguard stood dutifully by the doors as Daenerys took Sansa’s hand and led her down the lush grassy paths inlaid with milky white stone. Birds chirped and the wind rustled the leaves of manicured hedges and Sansa felt so far away from anywhere else she’d been. 

 

“The Reach suits you, Lady Sansa,” Daenerys complimented her. 

 

Sansa shifted her gaze from the rows of wisteria trees dripping lavender to the pale violet of the Queen’s eyes, searching her adoringly. The gardens made the Queen so achingly prepossessing, she almost forgot she had been spoken to. 

 

“It’s certainly a nice reprieve from sleet and hail,” Sansa mused. “If I may be honest, while I am overjoyed for Lady Talla, I wouldn’t have made the trip had there been no guarantee of seeing you.” 

 

The Queen’s eyes glinted in the sun as she squeezed Sansa’s hand and told her, “I’m glad you came, either way. Lady Tarly was less than enthused. I thought giving her and her family the seat of the Reach would be a great honor. All the poor girl seemed to do was insist she was the wrong choice. That she would rather it go to her future husband. I only agreed that she could share the title if she chose her own husband.” 

 

Sansa could certainly imagine that, as the young girl was the picture of youth at the altar earlier today. Smitten with her betrothed but teetering between apprehension and eagerness to please. It was hard not to see a version of herself in the girl, still dreaming of princes and castles, had things not gone so horribly awry. They turned down a hedged path, shaded slightly by the height of the bushes. 

 

“Warden of the Reach is a great deal of responsibility to suddenly hand to a girl who was always meant to be no more than someone’s wife,” Sansa reasoned. 

 

“I suppose you’re right,” Daenerys conceded. “Although, fearing incompetence more than lusting for power means she might be perfect for the job after all.” 

 

“Give her time. I understand not feeling ready for a great duty that seems to come out of nowhere, a family duty no less,” Sansa empathized. “It sounds like a choice when presented to you, but you know it isn’t. You know that you have to take it because if you don’t, someone far worse than you might and putting you and your people’s fate in the hands of monsters is something that you couldn’t live with. Not again.” 

 

Daenerys nodded as she listened, but stared ahead in thought. Sansa did feel the Queen stroke the back of her hands with her thumb as a comfort of sorts. She eyed the hydrangea trees lining the path, straight as soldiers, though they smelled far sweeter. 

 

“And how do you feel about your choice now, Lady of Winterfell?” Dany inquired, with a slight uptick in her timbre. It gave Sansa pause, but she decided to be honest anyway.  

 

“I think I’m well suited for it, and in a way it makes me feel connected to my family, I suppose,” she said frankly. “Although, some mornings I forget that the North is my duty now. I wake up and for a moment I expect my mother to call me for breakfast.” 

 

Daenerys turned to smile and release a genuine laugh at that, which Sansa keenly returned. They strolled into an intersection of hedges where a grove of fruit trees circled a grand marble fountain. Crystal clear water spilled and spouted from the tiers in deliberate streams from the mouths of a menagerie of animals. One for each great house, Sansa counted, all under the shade of a blooming rose perched on top. The two of them perched on the edge facing one another while Dany held both her hands, anxiously running her thumb across them until she spoke. 

 

“I ask,” she started, looking up with eyes begging Sansa to consider whatever was to come, “because I have been working on something that would change the realm for the better, but I cannot do it alone.” 

 

She paused to release a weighted sigh and Sansa tried not to smile at seeing the Queen so flustered. She was well aware of what a rare treat it was to be trusted like this and she bowed her head to encourage her to continue. 

 

“I want to start a council,” she announced with finality. 

 

Sansa furrowed her brow and stated, “But you already have a small council…” 

 

“Not a small council, a real council. One with a Lord from each of the seven kingdoms. Together, we shall govern the realm as one unanimous body where every kingdom shall feel equally represented and their needs heard and discussed,” Daenerys explained. She fussed with her lip as Sansa blinked back at her, processing this information. “What do you think of it?” 

 

“I…are you sure?” Sansa voiced the first thought that came to her mind. “You’d be giving up your throne and everything you fought for, everything my men fought for.” 

 

“This is what we fought for,” Dany implored. “I want to be a better ruler and give the people a new way of life, a better life. I’ll still be the Queen I suppose and leader of the council, but I cannot govern a world fairly that I do not know. The Lords know their lands and their people. I can better help them if I give them a voice.” 

 

It sounded lovely and ripe with good intentions. Too good to be true, because perhaps they were. Sansa always knew Westeros would never know peace while men plotted for power every night, especially as she laid beside those very men for many years. But Dany, so bright eyed and hellbent on bringing about change for the better, somehow always managed to inspire hope in even the bleakest of times. Sansa could feel that hope stirring in her chest in this very moment despite her doubts, along with something else entirely selfish. 

 

“I suppose you’d like me to represent the North,” Sansa surmised. 

 

“You would be my first choice,” Dany confirmed. 

 

“So, I would be spending quite a great deal more time in King’s Landing, I gather?” 

 

“Only as much as you desire.” 

 

Sansa reversed their hands and held Dany’s for a change, pulling her a bit closer. A breeze blew through the courtyard and kicked up Dany’s loose curls to have them dance wildly. 

 

“I desire quite a lot, more than the Lady of Winterfell should,” Sansa admitted, coyly. 

 

Dany leaned further on her own accord, indulging her, “I will admit that was a motivating factor in moving forward with the council.” 

 

Sansa smirked, rather satisfied with herself, and teased, “You’re saying you would dismantle a centuries old monarchy just to have me closer to you for a little while?” 

 

Blush crept up Dany’s cheeks, and she shook her head as she smiled down at their entwined hands. It wasn’t the threat of fire and blood and scorched enemies that she had sworn to Sansa in the wee hours of the morning, not exactly. However, this was at a much more personal cost to Dany, one that she would never dare ask of her. 

 

“There is very little I wouldn’t do to be with you, Sansa,” Daenerys confessed and when she met Sansa’s eyes again, it was clear that she had completely surrendered to that fact. 

 

And so Sansa surrendered as well, to the ache she had to reach out and pull the Queen into a kiss. She paused to graze her nose and bask in the anticipation of being so dangerously close before sinking into her lips. Dany hummed sweetly as she dropped Sansa’s other hand and combed her fingers through her hair. At the risk of being caught, Sansa had intended to keep it brief but Dany was always more addictive than she remembered. Her lips so plump and sweet like the plums dangling above and Sansa no less than starving for them. She wished they could stay hidden in the hedges of Highgarden forever.

 

The queen had other ideas, however, as she pulled back with a pained whine. Sansa’s eyes fluttered open and sighed longingly at the sight before her. Dany catching her breath with flush painting her alabaster cheeks and her lips a bruised red where Sansa had bit down a little too hard. 

 

“As much as I’d like to carry on, I did bring you out here to show you something,” Daenerys said, although the twitch of her brow and fingers gripping the back of her head told Sansa she was fighting the desire to kiss her again instead. Slipping her own hand out of Dany’s hair, she decided to help her resist. Their hands found one another once again and Sansa  followed her lead down another hedge lined path. 

 

When they came upon the mouth of another courtyard, Dany stopped. Here, several long rows of emerald green bushes sprinkled with roses ran the length of the square, yellow roses in particular. Dany looked up at Sansa, smiling nervously once again. Sansa wasn’t quite sure what this had to do with her, if at all. 

 

“I had them make sure it was done before the festivities,” Dany began. “As much as I am delighted to welcome Lady Talla to her new home, I wanted to make sure it’s previous inhabitants were not forgotten.” 

 

Sansa held her breath as the realization washed over her. The queen led Sansa down one of the rows at a leisurely pace so as to admire the pristine canary yellow roses blooming in the sun. Her stomach twisted painfully with every step. 

 

“Yellow roses for the great House Tyrell. Lady Olenna was fierce council and a loyal ally to me, and the realm. I wanted to honor her and her family and maintain their legacy for all future inhabitants of Highgarden,” she continued. They paused to admire a particularly bountiful bush and Dany reached under the leaves to snap a stem deftly and procure a single rose. She held it out for Sansa, adding softly, “And I know they meant a great deal to you.” 

 

The Tyrells were one of the great Westerosi families and it was only right to plant such an appropriate monument in their memory. Although, Sansa clearly grasped the underlying reason she was brought here. Rolling the stem of the rose between her fingers, Sansa understood Dany wanted her to know the garden was as much for Lady Olenna as it was for Margaery. In that way, Sansa also understood Dany had planted it  _ not _ so much for the legacy of the Tyrells, but really as a place of solace, just for her. 

 

\--

The scrape of Sansa’s knife against her plate as she sawed at her mutton echoed in banquet hall clear as a bell. Just silverware on metal and wood, chewing, and the soft thud of goblets set on the aging oak table kept Sansa company while she ate, despite sitting amidst her siblings. 

 

Well siblings and cousin. That one was taking some getting used to, although she’d denounce her own titles, few as they were, before she ever treated him as anyone less than her brother. He was certainly siding with the rest of her siblings at the moment, anyway.  

 

“Are you all honestly not going to speak to me the entire meal?” Sansa exclaimed. Bran and Jon both looked up from their meals while Arya remained fixated on her carrots. “It’s a good thing I’m on the council. I can speak for the needs of the North, and perhaps forge more alliances with lands beyond our neighbors…” 

 

“When has any Stark come back from the south with their head attached to their body?” Arya snapped, still not addressing Sansa directly. 

 

“Well, now I’ve lost my appetite,” Sansa quipped jovially. 

 

“Father’s death is a joke to you?” Arya rounded on her, knife clutched in her gloved fist. Sansa had the good sense to recoil. 

 

From the end of the table, Jon piped up, “I think she means to say she’s afraid for you, Sansa. We all are.” 

 

Sansa shifted her chair back so she could see her siblings better. Arya released her knife and slouched in her chair, the most agreeable she was capable of being. 

 

“I understand your concern, but I am leaving tomorrow for King’s Landing and that’s final. This is a good opportunity for the North. We’ve never been invited to court or even married into royal bloodlines,” Sansa explained. “Well, except for Aunt Lyanna.” She gestured to Jon who shifted in his seat, still uncomfortable with his own parentage. “I’ll be back before you know it.” 

 

“Bran,” Arya said suddenly, “can’t you see if we have enemies in King’s Landing still?” 

 

“That is beyond my ability to know, as I can’t anticipate the actions of others,” he told her, stoic and measured. 

 

“Well, can you see if she’s going to come home alive then?” Arya asked, the edge creeping into her voice. 

 

“I cannot see beyond the present-”

 

“Well then what good are you!” Arya cried, slamming her fist on the table and rattling the bowls. 

 

Jon stood and gripped the handles of Bran’s chair, declaring, “Come on, Bran, let’s head to the library while they sort this out. We’ll be, you know, reading or whatever if you need us.” 

 

Sansa watched them leave as long as she could to prolong the inevitable row she was about to have with her sister. As the door swung shut, she finally turned to face her sister and was struck by the look of abject concern on her face where a scowl usually resided. 

 

“Why do you even want to go back there? I was with you then, I know what it was like,” Arya asked softly, like Sansa had never heard her before. “How can you even bear to walk those halls?” 

 

Sansa did feel the terror coil in her stomach at the thought of returning, as she had the first time she had to entertain the idea of going back. She had spent so long fighting to escape, she would feel her whole body shake at the slightest suggestion of returning. She had to remind herself with a mantra, as soothing as a song. 

 

_ Joffrey is dead. Littlefinger is dead. Cersei is withering away in a cell. _

 

She smiled warmly at her sister, pondering, “It must look different, as they had to rebuild it all after Queen Daenerys’ dragon destroyed it.” 

 

“Still, how can you be so sure nobody will try to have you killed? We have no allies down South,” Arya entreated her. 

 

“Brienne will accompany me as my personal guard,” Sansa offered. 

 

“You know what I mean,” Arya waved her off. “Spies and spiders, people who will poison you or conspire to have you kidnapped.” 

 

Sansa leaned forward on her elbows and looked her sister in the eye, proclaiming, “Arya, I will return home in one piece, I’m sure of it. We don’t have any enemies anymore. We both saw to that, and it’s different there now. Dany is..., the Queen is different. She won’t let any harm come to me.” 

 

Arya gave an unconvinced blink, eerily not unlike Bran, and countered, “Because she loves you.” 

 

Sansa wasn’t prepared for such a statement. Not from Arya. She snapped her jaw shut and sighed through her nose. 

 

“That I don’t know,” she muttered. 

 

“You don’t  _ know _ ?” Arya said incredulously. “Bran even knows and half the time, I don’t think he remembers who we are. How can  _ you _ not know.”  

 

“No, I…” Sansa began, but rubbed her temple at the sudden turn of the conversation. “I know she cares for me and would spare no expense at my protection I just… she hasn’t told me… that.” 

 

Arya’s brow furrowed as she cocked her head to the side, rather wolf-like. Sansa half expected a furry grey ear to pop up from under her dark matted hair. 

 

“She hasn’t told you she loves you? After all of the times she has come to see you, all the gifts?” Arya marveled. 

 

“Gifts? How did you… there are no gifts…” 

 

“Oh please, Sansa, I’m not stupid. The whole castle knows about the flowers and you don’t hide your dragon pin as well as you think.” 

 

Sansa’s hand flew to the back of her head where she felt for the silver curve of the pin, frowning as she tried to shove it further into her braids. 

 

“Men in Westeros always shouted their love from the doorways of brothels for far less,” Arya continued. “What is stopping her? She looks at you like you birthed her dragons yourself.” 

 

Sansa’s face had gone entirely pink at this point, and she decided to just give in. 

 

“I told you, she’s different,” Sansa reiterated. “I do know she cares a great deal for me, that much she has made very clear.” 

 

Arya flipped the knife over and over in her hand far too confidently for Sansa to feel at ease. 

 

“Would she risk her life to protect you?" she finally asked. 

 

Sansa, struck by the question, turned away from her sister and glanced at the towering hearth behind them. The fire crackled as the flames curled their fingers around a small chunk atop the wood pile, consuming it completely like the dragon fire. Sansa could still feel the gust of wind as Daenerys’ great dragon soared overhead, rattling the ramparts of Winterfell and descending on the army of the dead with a blanket of fire. How small the Queen had looked astride her reptilian child; a patch of snow white against the ink black of her dragon’s scales. Blasts of fire so bright that they lit up the castle as if it were midday and warmed Sansa’s cheeks, even from such a distance. She remembered the Queen catching sight of Sansa and screaming desperately at her to run to the crypts, turning her dragon around and flying straight into the fray without a second thought. 

 

A small smile gracing her lips, she replied assuredly, “I believe she already has.” 

 

Arya pursed her lips but begrudgingly decided, “Fine. I trust you.” 

 

“Good,” Sansa said. “I believe Gendry will be there on behalf of the Stormlands. I’ll give him your best.” 

 

No sooner had she muttered the taunt did Arya have her knife in hand and aimed at Sansa’s throat, hissing, “You absolutely will  _ not. _ ” 

 

\--

 

Sansa’s final night in King’s Landing came far too quickly for her liking. Two weeks of squabbling children far too young to rule and dead end negotiations and votes that nearly led to a dagger lodged into the table on more than one occasion. She wouldn’t exactly call it a successful first gathering of the Council of Westeros, but perhaps the mere fact that they were all heading back to their respective kingdoms with all ten fingers still attached was victory enough. 

 

While the days had been exhaustingly frustrating with little to show for it, the nights were heavenly relief. Hands sliding across skin and hot, panting breaths like dragonfire against her lips. Arching into her and burying herself in her neck and chest and places that drew the sweetest sounds from Dany’s lips. Clinging to her, wrapping her legs around her, begging  _ don’t stop, don’t stop, Dany, don’t stop. _ Every night, she spent her remaining waking hours in the Queen’s chambers, succumbing to sleep in her arms on occasion. 

 

Tonight, however, was the last night and they made the most of every second. Spent and satiated, Sansa had draped herself across Daenerys, head above her heart and the rest of her limbs melting into the soft dips and curves of the Queen. The dry Southern heat seeped through the open balconies and baked itself into Sansa’s skin, coaxing her bones into an easy languor. She could only muster enough energy to pluck grapes from the bunch she’d placed on Dany’s chest, bursting each one between her teeth and filling her mouth with crisp, sweet juice. 

 

“You know, as a child, I never could have dreamed of all this,” Daenerys confided, skimming her fingertips over Sansa’s shoulders. 

 

“But you always knew you were a princess, didn’t you?” Sansa questioned, squashing another grape and humming at the sweetness. 

 

“I knew I was supposed to be a princess, but that was always a world away. A fairytale my brother would spin about what was ours across the narrow sea and how one day when we were old enough, he would take it back,” Daenerys reminisced with a sour clip to her words. “I didn’t feel like much of a princess and I didn’t think much of castles and gowns and knights. My dreams were only of a warm meal and a soft place to sleep that night.” 

 

Sansa frowned and pushed herself up onto her elbow, lying parallel to the Queen. She studied Dany’s face, placid and stormcloud eyes regarding gazing upon her bedfellow. 

 

“What about the house? The red door and the lemon tree?” Sansa reminded her. A sad smile dressed up as fondness formed on Dany’s lips and she looked away. Sansa hated it, but not as viscerally as whoever had caused it. 

 

“That was only for a little while, and I was so young I don’t remember it well,” she clarified. The fondness dissolved, leaving only melancholy in recalling the vicissitudes of her youth. “Then we were betrayed and had to live on the run from what I later learned were assassins sent by Robert Baratheon, the usurper. Street children covered in dirt and begging for food and sleeping in gutters. That’s all we were for what felt like a lifetime. Viserys became cruel and egregiously violent and… well, you know the rest.” 

 

Sansa felt her cheeks beginning to ache with her own frown. Dany looked back up at her and gave her a toothy smile, shaking her head. 

 

“Do not feel despair for my childhood,” she urged her, running her hand along Sansa’s jaw to loosen the tension. “It’s in the past, and I am here now with you, happier than I could have ever imagined.” 

 

Sansa nodded, reaching to pluck another grape from the bunch as she mused, “Well, I feel a bit silly for my childhood dreams now.” 

 

“Do tell me Sansa,” Dany encouraged her, “what do highborn girls in castles dream of?” 

 

Sansa shot her a look of amused disdain, to which Dany giggled.

 

“I’ll have you know that I did once aspire for more than Lady of Winterfell,” Sansa answered haughtily, but grinning nonetheless. “Amidst all my torturous sewing and history lessons and writing practice, I wished for nothing more than to marry Prince Joffrey and be his Queen. A dream I’m quite happy never came true.” 

 

Daenerys laughed and shook her head, agreeing, “Yes, his one act of kindness was denying you that.” 

 

Sansa hummed in agreement and plopped the last grape in her mouth. She found Dany eyeing her thoughtfully. 

 

“What sort of Queen would you be, Queen Sansa of the Seven Kingdoms,” Dany asked, chin tilted upwards in playful sternness. Sansa chuckled but fell reticent for a beat. It was so long ago she wanted such a thing, and at the time she had no idea what it truly was she wished for. 

 

“I never thought about that part of it, as a child,” Sansa pondered. “It was mainly about the vanity of it. The gowns and castles and knights willing to die for you. It wasn’t even about Joffrey, really. I just knew I wanted the people to love me as their Queen.”

 

She felt diminutive and foolish as soon as she said it, and peered up at Dany sheepishly. To her credit, the Queen merely looked on attentively without a trace of mockery. It set her at ease enough for her to unfurl a bit more of the memory. 

 

“I remember I had decided that I would  _ make _ them love me,” she recalled with a snicker. “Can you imagine? It’s best I was never his Queen. What a nightmare I would have been.” 

 

Dany’s brow quirked as she remarked, “Well, there is still hope for that dream. Perhaps not his Queen, but  _ a _ Queen.” 

Sansa swallowed the grape thickly, staring back at the Queen intently. The implication of her words striking like flint on steel, prickling Sansa’s skin with white hot sparks. 

 

“I… In Westeros that isn’t the way,” Sansa deflected, for no good reason other than to say something, anything. Dany only furrowed her brow slightly, turning onto her side to mirror Sansa and face her fully, close enough for their knees to brush. The hand not propping her up cradled Sansa’s face as her thumb brushed her cheek. 

 

“If I can’t marry the woman I love, than what sort of Queen am I?” Dany whispered into the dwindling space between them. 

 

Sansa balked at the admission, and she felt it show on her face. Such a bold declaration and yet muttered like a small, certain truth. She drowned in Dany’s searching eyes, sharing in the swirl of fear and hope she found there, but couldn’t speak. She could barely breathe. 

 

Dany’s voice trembled as she said, “You don’t have to say it back. Now or ever if you don’t, I-I just wanted you to know how… what you are to me.” 

 

Oh, but how she wanted to. It swelled up inside her like a thousand oceans poised to breach the walls of her teeth and lips. She couldn’t remember the last time someone told her they loved her, not unless it was steeped in deception or malice. More than hearing it, she felt it in the feather light kiss Dany pressed to her unmoving lips. She saw it in the knit of Dany’s brow and the understanding in her eyes. 

 

“I don’t think I can say it just yet,” Sansa choked out weakly. She grazed her knuckles along Dany’s chin and ran her thumb across her bottom lip, stained crimson from wine and Sansa’s teeth. Dany nodded almost imperceptibly into Sansa’s touch. “But can I show you?” 

 

Dany’s lips smoothed under Sansa’s thumb into a smile and she whispered, “You may.” 

 

Sansa kissed her deeply, tugging her closer by the small of her back to do away with the space between them. Heat singed her skin as she moved against Daenerys who sank completely into Sansa’s arms. With every nip and kiss at snowy skin, the dragon growled and whimpered and relinquished shuddering breaths. When Sansa’s fingers slipped between Dany’s thighs, she stoked the flames of her Queen until they blazed and roared and consumed them both. 

 

\--

 

The next time Queen Daenerys visited Winterfell, it was not under the guise of diplomacy. She did not offer any explanation to her advisors, nor did she send ravens to the great houses of the North to alert her arrival. She merely departed King’s Landing in the mist of early morning and landed Drogon by the rear gates of Winterfell that afternoon. 

 

Sansa, however, waited expectantly for her arrival on the ramparts. She rushed through the gates as fast as she could, given the inches of snow weighing down her terribly impractical cape. With Daenerys barely having set foot on the ground, Sansa wrapped her arm around her waist and brazenly pulled her into a searing kiss. She paid no mind to the guards turning around or dropping their gazes politely on the walls and at the gates as she held Dany’s soft, warm cheek in her hand and took her lips between her own. 

 

_ Let them see. Let them know the red wolf brought the dragon to heel. _

 

Lunch was a casual but tense affair, at least on behalf of Arya. If Jon was capable of scorn, Sansa had never seen it and Bran only had one emotion; apathy. The Queen was not stupid and quite perceptible to Arya’s icy stance towards her. In her typical fashion, she took it all in stride and even smiled warmly, unperturbed in the face of Arya’s glares over her mead.  

 

Why Daenerys would want to spend more time with Ayra after that was beyond Sansa, but the Queen requested Arya’s company on a walk around the grounds. It certainly shocked Arya, who grumbled her acquiescence into her goat leg and Sansa asked to join them purely for the entertainment. 

 

Their walk led them to the temporary dragon nest where the two gargantuan beasts gnawed at bones and bellowed a screeching greeting to their mother. Or at least that’s how the Queen received it, stroking their chins and such. It was hard to tell the difference between a greeting and a death sentence from the fiery throat of a dragon. 

 

Daenerys turned back to her guest of honor and addressed her, “Lady Stark-” 

 

“Arya.” 

 

“Of course, Arya,” the Queen corrected herself, appearing somewhat amused. “I thought I would bring both of my children on this visit to the North as a gift for you.” 

 

Arya shifted on her feet and looked back at her sister, who merely shrugged. 

 

“You’re giving me a dragon?” she assumed, and the laugh that bubbled from Daenerys was sweetly melodic as it mingled with the rumbles of the dragons behind her. 

 

“No, and I don’t think they are mine to give should I even want to. Dragons are loyal but they know no true master. Not unlike yourself, so I’ve heard,” the Queen answered. She stepped a bit closer to Arya and the silvery threads of Sansa’s gifted cloak gave her entire body a halo as she stood against the snow. Arya, to her credit, stood her ground cooly. “My family has a great history of dragon riders, but none more fierce and feared than the daughters of Valyria. Baela and her dragon Moondancer. Rhaenyra on the back of Syrax. And none could forget the great conquerer Queen Rhaenys on Meraxes and-” 

 

“Visenya and her dragon Vhagar, the greatest warriors ever known in Westeros,” Arya finished. 

 

Daenerys quirked her brow but said, “I see your sister didn’t exaggerate when she told me you would only talk of dragon riders as a girl. I thought you might like to try it out for yourself.” 

 

At this suggestion, Arya paled almost to the color of the snow banks around them. She looked anxiously between the Queen and the smoke curling from Rhaegal’s nostrils. Sansa herself almost stepped forward to protest the insane notion. 

 

“Ride a dragon? But I am not a Targaryen,” she protested. 

 

“Lucky for you, I am,” the Queen countered, and turned to approach her children. 

 

“But what if he doesn’t want me to? Roasts me alive?” 

 

The Queen looked back at Arya, scrutinizing her rather disappointed. 

 

“I thought you were braver than that. Perhaps I was wrong. Dragons will know if you’re afraid, so it’s probably best…” 

 

Arya took a step forward, crunching the snow under her boot as she proclaimed boldly, “I’m not afraid.” 

 

“Good,” Daenerys said firmly. 

 

Sansa clenched her fists to stave off the nerves as she watched her tiny little sister approach the green dragon. As Daenerys held Arya’s hand up, Rhaegal sniffed it skeptically. He reared back slightly and Sansa held her breath as he appeared to lunge forward. At the last second, he merely nudged Arya’s gloved hand with his snout and a grunt, sending her stumbling backwards but laughing incredulously and in spite of herself. She turned to her sister with a gloriously wide grin and Sansa returned it. 

 

Before she could bid them goodbye, Daenerys had already helped hoist Arya up onto Rhaegal’s back. The beast took to the sky with a sudden flap of his great leathery wings, dusting up a snow storm so much that Sansa had to shield her eyes. Once it settled, Sansa peeked over her arm to catch the silhouettes of the dragons soaring over the white peaks of the hills. The worry for her sister’s safety was quickly consumed by a swell of pride that felt so very much like her father was clapping a hand on her shoulder, smiling on behind her at Arya’s latest adventure. 

 

\--

 

From the balcony in the courtyard, Sansa saw her sister and the Queen return. The best of friends they were not, but smiling and at ease with one another at least. When they broke off to return to their respective quarters, Arya began climbing the stairs up towards Sansa. 

 

From over the edge, Sansa called, “I see you came back alive. Was it everything you dreamed it would be.” 

 

Arya reached the landing and strolled up to her sister, hair still windswept and cheeks pink as peaches. 

 

“Actually, it was. I see why the Kings and Queens of old warred with the Targaryens just for a chance at that glorious ride,” Arya told her. 

 

“Did you and the Queen… talk? I mean, you were gone for a while, so what did you two talk about?” Sansa pressed, perhaps prying a little for herself. 

 

“From the backs of dragons hundreds of feet in the air? You can hardly hear yourself. Don’t be stupid, we didn’t talk about you,” Arya scoffed, and there was her sister’s familiar derision. She had to laugh at it, and herself for being so pathetically transparent. “We did talk a little on our return walk, about our fathers and duty and the like.” 

 

“She’s not-” 

 

“Her father, I know,” Arya finished for her. She wore an understanding smile that confirmed her revelation. “I don’t know if I’m much of our father either. You are though, like father.” 

 

Sansa reeled back in shock. Her face twisted up in rejection of the notion and she laughed nervously before she could speak. 

 

“I hardly think that’s true,” she protested. 

 

“It is, and the Northerners can see it in you,” Arya insisted rather factually, as if they were discussing the weekly budget. “You’re not all him, and his soft honor. You are the steel that the world forged of you now. But thank the Gods for that, as a fat lot of good it did him or anyone else in our family. Father and mother and half our brothers are dead, and yet we’re still here.” 

 

It concerned Sansa a touch how flippantly she spoke of their parents’ gruesome and tragic ends, but she had a point. Who she became allowed her to survive in a world where they could not. Would dear father would be proud of her, of what she had become? It was not the life of a docile lady he had wanted for her, surely, and for that reason he probably would have preferred she had stayed the little dove of Winterfell forever. Would he think she had done right by the North? Would he approve of the Queen and how much more she was to Sansa? 

 

Did Arya share these anxieties? Surely not. Not once did she ever care what anyone thought of her, and she wouldn’t start now.

 

“You’ve got pieces of him too, you know,” Sansa said quietly. “You and Bran and Jon, even.” 

 

Arya nodded, stepping forward just enough for her to lay a hand on Sansa’s as it rested on the railing. It’s newness had Sansa realize how little physical affection her and her siblings showed one another. She should rectify that in the future, as long as Arya didn’t try to slice off her hand for trying. She looked up from the railing to find her sister smiling fondly up at her. 

 

“Perhaps, but you’ve got the biggest piece,” Arya concluded. 

 

She removed her hand and silently ambled off. Sansa heard her boots hit the stone steps towards her chambers when they suddenly scuffed like she’d spun on her heel. 

 

“Come to think of it, she did ask me if I should want to be Lady of Winterfell one day,” Arya piped up. Sansa wheeled around and furrowed her brow to match her sisters puzzled expression. 

 

“Well, what did you say?” she asked. 

 

Arya chuckled at her sister’s need to even ask, replying, “I told her of course not.” 

 

She continued to find the very idea hilarious. Her tickled cackles echoed all the way down the hallway until she shut her bedroom door. 

 

\--

 

When Daenerys requested Sansa join her at Summerhall, she thought perhaps the Queen had finally gone mad. In subsequent ravens, she did clarify to Sansa that she had been in the process of restoring it this past year. An entire wing had been rebuilt and was now habitable enough for a Queen. She wanted very much to treat Sansa to the first outing at the once great royal residence. 

 

Just her, Sansa discovered as she reached the top of the winding road to find a small party of just the Queen, a few Queensguard, and a skeletal servant staff. No other council members or advisors or Maesters or anyone else. 

 

She did selfishly sigh with relief at the discovery as they rolled to a stop. She had hoped for such indulgent time alone with the Queen, agonizingly so as she journeyed down the continent, but she wasn’t foolish enough to expect it. 

 

The arid breeze grazed her cheeks as she stepped down from the carriage and the Queen’s soft hand guided her down to the dirt. Her usually plum eyes looked almost sapphire against the backdrop of the rusty clay dusting the landscape in every direction, and the rest of her no less exquisite. Milky white and silvery like a moonbeam dropped from the sky. 

 

“You must excuse the road, Lady Stark,” Daenerys implored her as she led them both towards a looming metal gate with iron curling like vines across it. She could see nothing else behind a wall of deep emerald junipers, lining the road like slender, dutiful Queensguards. The crisp sweetness of the trees mingled with the clay in the air and it was so foreign to Sansa, they might as well have crossed the narrow sea. 

 

“I’ve never been this far south before,” Sansa stated aloud. 

 

Daenerys peered up at her from the corner of her eye and asked, “It’s always summer here, hence the namesake. I hope you don’t mind the heat.” 

 

Sansa met her gaze and smiled slyly, licking her lips as she said, “I don’t mind at all. In fact, my skin has begun to crave it.” 

 

Pink blush colored the Queen’s cheeks and she bit her lip to suppress her grin. Daenerys did squeeze the hand she was still holding as they came to stand before the gates. Slowly they swung back into the trees to reveal a splashing, grand fountain at the end of a tunnel of even more pruned junipers. Tugging Sansa along, Dany hurried down the path in the cool shade of the trees and stopped them at the base of the fountain. 

 

Sansa’s head fell back as the great Summerhall towered before them like a sleeping dragon. The center entrance hall it’s puffed out chest out as the rest of the castle spread like wings in either direction. The facade glittered with inlaid blue flecks of glass mosaics in the creamy white stone, made even whiter by the windows reflecting the cloudless sky and shutters as red as the mountains. It would have been the grandest home Sansa had ever seen were it not for a monstrous bite taken out of the top of the entrance hall, leaving charred rock and gnarled iron stumps like teeth marks. The pristine right wing stood in tall, beautiful contrast to the left wing, reduced to nothing but rubble and gaping archways where walls once stood and the ashen remains of furniture and rugs and silks. 

 

Although, beholding the remains of the unstoppable power of fire, bending steel and melting stone, sent a familiar thrill down her spine. It was an ominous and more terrifying kind of beauty that she had somewhere along the line grown to prefer. 

 

“The palace was once a pleasure house for my family,” Daenerys told Sansa, turning to face her as Sansa did the same. The rocky ground crunched under her boots as she stepped closer. Her eyes admired Sansa’s face, lingering on her nose and landing brazenly on her mouth. “I thought we might as well let the place live up to its name.” 

 

Her breath hitched as the Queen guided Sansa’s chin down to meet her craning neck. She felt Dany’s breath on her lips as her eyes slid shut, but she was stopped just short of brushing them. She didn’t have to open her eyes to know Dany wore her mischievous little smile. Air hit her cheeks as Dany drew back and her eyes fluttered open to see the Queen pulling Sansa towards the great oak doors, flung wide open to welcome them home. 

 

\--

 

Dany woke Sansa the next morning with a plethora of fruit and pastries and warm bread and butter as salty as the sea, all at the foot of their bed. They laid, wrapped lazily in silky sheets, giggling and gorging on the spoils of the south. Pink and orange and yellow curtains billowed around the open windows in the warm Dornish breeze as the sunlight bleeding through painted Dany’s hair in fiery hues. 

 

Dany found it hilarious to pop a raspberry on each fingertip and wiggle them in Sansa’s face. Sansa quite enjoyed holding Dany’s wrist still as she ate each raspberry off, dragging her lips and teeth slowly up each finger. Even more delicious was vulpine smile it drew out of the Queen, who kissed her deeply and lapped into Sansa’s mouth to taste the berry on her tongue. 

 

“We should get dressed,” Sansa mumbled against Dany’s lips. 

 

“I’m not done with breakfast,” Dany panted as she held them close, diving back in for another kiss. Sansa dodged it, sending the Queen into her neck where she nuzzled Sansa’s skin with a whine in protest. 

 

Pressing her mouth to the shell of Dany’s ear, Sansa said haughtily, “I want to see the gardens, so I’m getting dressed.” 

 

She peeled herself away from the Queen’s grip and made her way over to her dresses, laid out pristinely by the handmaids. Upon arrival, the closet had been full of them, custom made to her measurements and each one chosen by the Queen. She had assumed Sansa didn’t have any dresses suitable for the warm south, and while she had assumed correctly, it didn’t make the gesture any less extravagant. She didn’t think she would ever get used to being doted upon like this. 

 

“Red or blue?” Sansa propositioned, feeling the Queen’s eyes on her before she spun around, holding two options up.  

 

Dany, who had indeed been unabashedly watching Sansa’s body from where she languished in the sheets, snapped to attention as she was addressed. She lifted herself onto her elbows to assess the options. 

 

“You know how much I love to see you in red,” she dictated, “but today, that blue one there. I had the dressmaker search for weeks to find the exact color to match your eyes.” 

 

Sansa always found herself breathless at how smoothly Dany could shift from coldly hegemonic to soft and adoring. The sentiment was nearly enough to have Sansa climbing back into bed and kissing the pleased expression off her face. It didn’t help that the Queen was splaid so resplendently naked, tousled silver blonde hair and plush, curled lips. 

 

“Blue it is, then,” Sansa acquiesced. Although, as the Queen couldn’t help one last cherishing look at her bare skin, Sansa’s cheeks rebelled against the choice, suffused instead with a warm, berry red. 

 

\--

 

The warm winds from the south and the frequent rains of the Stormlands had tended the abandoned gardens of Summerhall into a lush and sprawling jungle. Overgrown vines turned long trellises into leafy caverns. Great gnarled roots grew to swallow the stone walkways, often blocking entire paths. From their canopies echoed symphonies of unseen songbirds and parakeets. Dany had instructed her builders to leave it all alone, as the untamed vegetation reminded her fondly of Essos and the painted tapestries of Old Valyria. 

 

Sansa was enamored with how it enraptured the young Queen; traipsing merrily through the branches and over sunken walls, far from the auspices of her Queensguard. She had to gather her flowing skirt to keep up with Dany, who’s tunic and linen trousers gave a mobility advantage. Were it not for her blood red cape and twinkling bell laugh trailing behind her, Sansa would have lost Dany in a thicket of branches several times. It would be near sundown when they returned to the castle to retire for supper, which they would almost always take in their shared chambers. 

 

They ventured particularly far one afternoon, Sansa at the point in the day where she strolled along a few paces behind, knowing Dany would double back to retrieve her should she find something. The air palpably thickened beneath the dense canopies and Sansa preferred her dress and hair not stick to her skin with sweat. A ways down the path, the familiar nest of silver braids disappeared behind a grove of slender trees but this time, didn’t return. 

 

Instead Dany called out, “Sansa, come quickly! You must see this.” 

 

Quickening her pace, Sansa followed the uneven path until she spotted the Queen, standing under a half-crumbled stone archway between pale walls nearly consumed by vines. Once rounded the corner to stand beside her, Sansa gasped. The far wall of this decent sized courtyard had succumbed to a landslide from the adjacent foothills, bringing with it a waterfall of scarlet poppies that tumbled down the hillside and spilled into the entire alcove. Trickling through the branches, the waning sunlight seemed to light patches of the flowers ablaze. 

 

“I say we make camp here for lunch,” Dany offered, lacing her fingers through Sansa’s to lead her through the fiery thicket. The stalks rose as high as their knees and as they nestled themselves among them, the sea of red drowned them in every direction. 

Not long into their lunch of soft cheeses and jams and breads, Sansa felt the sluggish pull of fatigue. She leaned back into Dany’s chest and shut her eyes to breathe in the sweet citrus air and the smoky spice that always emanated from the Queen, regardless of how long she’d last ridden her dragons. With Dany’s heartbeat drumming in her ear, and perhaps aided by the intoxicating perfume of the poppies, Sansa could sink into a waking dream. The leaves rustling in the breeze. Wine in her belly and sun on her cheeks. Dany’s humming. No past and no future. Just the two of them, like this, adrift in a sea of poppies for eternity. 

 

Fingertips pressing pleasantly against her scalp woke her from a sleep she didn’t remember falling into. 

 

“We must get back for supper, my love, or they’ll come looking for us,” Dany whispered into her ear. Sansa’s mouth spread into a sleepy smile as she nuzzled into Dany’s cheek. 

 

Reluctantly, she gathered herself as Daenerys gathered the remains of their lunch into the basket, and hand in hand, they made the trek back down the path from whence they came. Dany was right, as the sun was already sinking behind the mountains and bathing the gardens in fire. It wasn’t until later, when Sansa sat down at the vanity mirror, that she realized Dany’s handiwork. Poppies woven intricately into the braids around her head. 

 

“Do you like them? I couldn’t help myself,” Dany said as she came to stand behind her. She fussed with a few loose flowers and let her hand graze across Sansa’s cheek sweetly. Pressing a kiss to Sansa’s ear, she murmured, “Targaryen colors become you, my love.” 

 

Sansa took in the sight of them; Dany in her splendidly fitted black tunic woven with crimson that trickled down from her shoulders and herself with a crown of blood red poppies and their black hearts. They were quite the pair. The flames and shadows of the candlelight painting them with all the glorious splendor and terrifying beauty of the tapestries of old. Sansa’s shoulders straightened as the primal wolf within her grew proud and bold with a fearsome dragon at her back. 

 

“Yes, they certainly do.” 

 

\--

 

A fortnight into their holiday, a storm blew through the Red Mountains. They had been exceedingly lucky to have so much blue sky for as long as they did, considering the namesake of the region. Rain pelted the windows and all the lush colors of the halls muted as the castle was bathed in grey. 

 

But that was no matter, according to Sansa, who grew restless after too many hours in bed. Of course, Dany had kept her quite entertained, and her thighs did ache as if they had climbed every tree in the gardens that morning. She had decided that riding a dragon must be nowhere near as exhausting as being ridden by one, no matter how petite said dragon might be as she straddled her hips and breathed fire into her chest. Still, she could only spend so many hours tangled up in Daenerys’ satiated arms, falling in and out of indulgent naps. The restless North coursing through her blood wouldn’t let her sit still for too long. 

 

She managed to entice the Queen with a venture into the ruins of the northern wing. The servants and guards both insisted it was too unstable to explore, especially in the torrential downpour that flooded the open corridors and winds barrelling through the crumbled walls. Dany, to her credit, argued that what was left of Summerhall had remained exactly as it was through hundreds of storms, and this one would be no different. 

 

Off they went through the great entrance hall, borrowed shields held over their heads to keep dry where rain poured in through gaps in the ceiling. They sought shelter in the first room with enough roof in tact. A grand, two story great hall that rendered Sansa speechless, despite the derelict state of it. Holding forth her lanturn, she could make out twin hearths that remained fairly intact along the left wall, holding up wide mantels of white marble with intricately carved scenes of what Sansa assumed were Targaryen conquests. The right side sported pillared arches that opened up the hall to the gardens beyond. Unfortunately, they also welcomed drafty winds that chilled the room just to the point of discomfort. 

 

What captivated Sansa the most, however, were the murals that covered every inch of the walls. Faded in the grey afternoon light and defaced with peeling paint and fallen rubble, certainly, but no less a sight to behold. Her head bent back as far as it could as she followed the familiar painted escapades of Aemon the Dragonknight and the great warrior prince Baelor Breakspear, until she realized she stood alone. 

 

Turning to search the room, she found Daenerys towards the center. She stood just a step away from a hole in the roof where mangled steel gave way to the rain, once the place of a glass dome of sorts. 

 

“Be careful,” she called out, her voice bouncing back at her in the cavernous hall. Daenerys paid her no mind and did not move her gaze from the hole in the roof, on the precipice of the pouring water. 

 

Sansa approached her tentatively and stopped just a few feet short. She wasn’t sure if she was intruding on whatever made the space so redolent to the Queen. Also, she would rather not ruin her boots in the puddles flooding the stone. Daenerys must have felt her close, as she finally spoke. 

 

“My great grandfather is the reason this place burned into ruin, you know.” 

 

Sansa nodded, and realizing she stood unseen at the Queen’s back, verbally replied, “I did know that actually. Our tutors taught us of the tragedy of Summerhall.” 

 

“So you know they burned alive, all of them,” Daenerys remarked. “All of them except my brother, Rhaegar.” 

 

“That I did not know,” Sansa replied. Finally, Dany lowered her head and turned to face Sansa. She wore a most bedeviled expression, as if these stories had haunted her for her entire life. Stories of her family’s dynasty, with all its grandeur painted across these walls, as it was tragically whittled down to only her. For so many years, she was the sole surviving Targaryen, alone no matter the continent she found herself on. She had spoken of her desire to simply return home once again, but what sort of home was it for her, really? Dany had fought through unimaginable strife to return to nothing but crumbled castles and the ghosts who haunt them. 

 

“He was born here, that very day,” Daenerys recounted wistfully. “Safe in a bundle in his mother’s arms, on his way back to King’s Landing as his family burned behind him. Fools, all of them. My great grandfather for trying to bring back the dragons and my great uncle Duncan, for giving up his throne for a commoner. My brother was never meant to be king.” 

 

Sansa reached her hand out to beckon her forth. Dany obliged, and let Sansa sooth the back of her hand with her thumb, although she wouldn’t look her in the eye. 

 

“And you even less meant to be Queen,” Sansa reminded her, an optimistic lilt to her voice that hopefully would lift the mood. It did get her to look up, but her eyes had glossed over with unshed tears. 

 

Dany swallowed before asking, her voice thick with fear, “Do you hate him, my brother, for what he did to your family?” 

 

Sansa’s mouth snapped shut and she blinked owlishly in shock. She hadn’t given the prince’s role in her life much thought, really, and upon doing so in that very moment, found no resentment. When Bran and Sam had told her the details of Prince Rhaegar’s marriage to her aunt, relief settled into her bones, as if she had been right all along. Not about Jon’s parentage, of which she couldn’t care less, but of her own father’s honor. All her life, the idea that he fathered a bastard while at war never fit the man who raised her. It brought her the deepest comfort to know that he had stayed the noble, frustratingly dutiful man he had always been, until the very end. 

 

As for her aunt Lyanna, well, her capriciousness made all the more sense. If she was as much like Arya as her father had often waxed on about, she did only as she pleased. Sansa would even dare to say that it was Lyanna who had stolen the dragon prince away, and not the other way around.

 

Squeezing Dany’s hand reassuringly, Sansa finally answered, “I have no hate in my heart for him, Dany, I promise.” 

 

That seemed to pacify the Queen a bit, as she nodded and pressed her lips into a thin line. 

 

“I never knew him, but I was told he loved this place, even in its ruin,” she said, voice quivering still and expression begging Sansa to tell her the truth.“He would have been a great king. They say he was gentle and sweet, and loved to sing to the smallfolk more than anything else. I suppose one must be fiercer than that to be a great king, but he would have at least been a kind one.” 

 

Sansa shrugged nonchalantly, offering, “They are not mutually exclusive, you know, to be a great king or a kind king. Some kings were great because they were kind.” 

 

“You think so?” Dany asked, reedy and unsure. Her eyes beseeching eyes sparkling even in the dim, ashen light. 

 

“I know so,” Sansa confirmed. 

 

Sansa ran the pad of her thumb across Dany’s soft cheek, well aware they were not discussing Prince Rhaegar anymore. 

 

Nuzzling Sansa’s hand, Daenerys pressed a kiss there before taking in her own to lead her back to the precipice of the rain pouring in from the shattered dome. It must have been quite a showstopper on those clear Dornish nights. They did not linger for much longer, as Daenerys shook the reveries from her mind and flashed Sansa a winning grin. 

 

“Come, let’s see what had my dear brother so besotted with a pile of rubble,” she said jovially. It warmed Sansa to see that dazzling grin again. 

 

Climbing over charred furniture and side-stepping deluges of rainwater, they traversed the ruined north wing quite excitedly. Nature had begun to encroach where the walls once stood and small wildflowers grew in the cracks of the stone floors. The modest library they discovered was less reduced to ash than Sansa predicted, given the fiery source of the destruction. Albeit waterlogged, several shelves of books were still in tact and fairly readable. Sansa piled as many as she could carry in one arm and Dany promised they would send the servants to retrieve the rest. 

 

Several bedrooms were charred shells of their once lavish glory. Had there been any personal effects that survived the fire, they’d surely been looted already. Overturned vanities and drawers pulled from bureaus were evidence of that. Sansa didn’t discourage Daenerys from exploring them, however. She understood how meaningful it must be for her to see where her family once walked and danced and dined and lived. 

 

They did not have to guess when they would come upon the King’s quarters. The hallway they had ventured down spilled out into a crater in the castle where a massive bedroom had once stood. Nothing remained, not wall nor roof, as if it were sliced off cleanly. Well nothing save the blackened marble hearth that stood austerely in the center of the room. The canopies of the surrounding trees had grown over enough that at least the rain wasn’t completely flooding the once room. 

 

Not only was it true that King Aegon burned down Summerhall to bring the return of dragons, but he had clearly set fire to his own chambers to do it. Targaryen madness took many forms, Sansa supposed. She turned to Daenerys to find her stricken at the sight before them. Before Sansa could reach out to her, however, Dany had stepped forward into the gaping remains. 

 

She left the guard’s shield behind as she took each step with sacred trepidation. Her boots sank into puddles and drips of rain through the branches dampened her hair and tunic but she was transfixed. Her eyes, struck wide with reverence, scanned the rubble, or what hadn’t been washed away in 40 years of Stormlands weather. Sansa wished to follow her but she’d never been more certain that she should stay right where she was. 

 

Upon reaching the hearth at the center of the room, Dany’s pale hands appeared tinted pink against the snow white marble. She slowly let her fingers skim the cracks and carved crevices until she rounded it’s corner and out of sight. Sansa shifted on her feet as she waited in the eerie silence. She tried not to think of the dying King and his sons and their screams as their flesh burned-

 

“Sansa! Look!” 

 

Pulled sharply from her daydream, Sansa surged forward to come to her aid. She needn’t worry for long as the Queen emerged from behind the hearth, covered in soot and holding two stones in her arms. Sansa furrowed her brow in confusion as Dany rushed towards her. As she got closer, Sansa could make out scaly textures on the stones and beneath the caked on soot, flashes of red and green. No, they couldn’t be. 

 

“Dragon eggs,” Dany said, reading her mind. Her face was glowing, despite the black smudges marring her cheeks. 

 

“Are they even real ones? They didn’t hatch in the fire for King Aegon,” Sansa pointed out, and to rather devastating consequences. She was trying her best to discourage any second attempts. 

 

But Dany only beamed brighter and declared, “They will hatch for me. I know it. I can feel it.” 

 

She grinned as wildly as Sansa had ever seen and looked down at the eggs proudly and with such purpose that, damnit, Sansa believed her. 

 

\--

 

As soon as the rain let up that night, the guards and servants and even Daenerys herself set to work building a massive fire pit out in the garden. Wisely, they built it in a wide clearing that bore the uneven and sunken slabs of stone that once made for a lovely garden terrace. Breaking only once for supper, they built up the logs and stoked the flames until they licked at the speckles of stars above. 

 

The servants and guards left them as Daenerys bid them to do, although Sansa was sure the Queensguard lurked dutifully as they always did. She found herself staring into the flames. As formidable as they were, it was hard to look anywhere else. They drew her in and danced before her wildly. She recalled what the Red Woman had always been going on about looking into the flames for the Lord of Light. Maybe if she stared long enough, hard enough, she might… 

 

Heavy silk dropping to the ground snapped her attention to her left. Whatever she wanted to say died in her throat as she registered Daenerys bare from the waist up and making fast work of her trousers. She stood, immobile, jaw hanging on it’s hinge, until Dany spotted her gaping and laughed. 

 

“What? I’m not going to spoil a perfectly wonderful sporting garment,” she explained as she tugged her trousers down to become fully nude. 

 

“Spoil… what do you…,” Sansa balked. 

 

“Do you trust me, my love?” Dany said quite seriously. She approached Sansa purposefully and stood before her, flames flickering in her eyes. 

 

“Against better judgement, yes,” Sansa muttered. 

 

“Good, then you mustn’t come after me. Do you promise?” 

 

“Come after you where!?” 

 

“Do you promise me, Sansa?” 

 

“No!” 

 

“Sansa, please, promise me.” 

 

She pleaded with such gravity, it dissipated what nascent trust she had just developed with the Queen. She couldn’t be serious. Stories of the birth of her dragons were just that, stories! Tales exaggerated by men to frighten one another into distraction while Westeros was at war. 

 

The Queen decided not to wait for Sansa’s word, and turned to collect the eggs from the basket. She held them tightly in her arms as she strode calmly towards the pit. With each short step, Sansa’s breathing grew shallow and she knew not what to do to stop this. She was frozen in horror as she watched Dany lift her foot to take the final step over the circling of stones. 

 

“Dany, please! Don’t!” Sansa cried, her voice tapering off into a sob. 

 

The Queen paused for a beat to send Sansa a reassuring smile before submerging her whole body into the flames and causing sparks to erupt and shower the surrounding stone. An anguished cry tore from Sansa’s lips and she tried to lunge forward but strong arms circled her own and held her back. She thrashed wildly and screamed for her love, nowhere to be seen amidst the crackling fire. 

 

“Help your Queen! Get water! This is madness, someone go in there and help her!” she bellowed as she fought against unmoving guards. 

 

“Khaleesi is zhavorsa,” grunted a Dothraki Queensguard, who easily held her still with one muscular arm. He watched the flames dutifully but unbothered. Looking down at Sansa, he gruffly assured her, “Zhavorsa is vorsa.” 

 

It meant nothing to Sansa who only gritted her teeth at him and cried for Daenerys again and again until she couldn’t hear herself anymore. Her thrashing clouded the air with kicked up sand and dirt and time ticked by torturously slow, but she remained firmly held still by the guards. 

 

Heaving for breath, Sansa thought she was imagining it at first in her grief. The shadow of a person stepping forward in the flames. Was this the Lord of Light? Was this a vision? Of all the Gods, the old and the new, was there truly only one after all? 

 

Dark violet eyes emerged with a crown of silver hair. Skin smooth and white against the orange flames. The Queen, her Dany, unharmed and glowing like an ember. She was so overjoyed to see her, Sansa almost missed the winged reptiles clinging to her shoulders and clamoring up her arm. Gaping silence struck her once again, but this time in awe. 

 

Daenerys turned to Sansa and sighed into a smile of relief, as if she had perhaps had doubts herself. The Queen made her way over to her and the guards slowly released her to her feet. She heaved several breaths that morphed into stunned laughter as the pearly blue dragon screeched into the night from his perch on Dany’s shoulder. He eyed her curiously and craned his long neck to sniff at her. 

 

“Do not be afraid,” Dany urged, to both of them perhaps. Sansa heeded her words and held out her shaky closed fist. The baby dragon recoiled slightly but then bravely gave it a few whiffs and a friendly bump with his sleek snout. Sansa and Dany both grinned gleefully at one another and Dany rewarded him with a scratch under his chin. 

 

Sansa didn’t believe much in the Gods; the old or the new or the seven or the drowned or the many-faced or even the one who breathed life back into her once dead brother. And how could she? Stories were lovely and comforting, but for Sansa seeing was believing. She saw no gods come to her aid as the world’s cruelty and violence nearly destroyed her several times over.  Maybe they had once protected the realms of men, but she believed they had long ago forsaken her and all the rest of them. 

 

Tonight, however, she saw a woman enter a blazing pyre and emerge unscathed, with an armful of dragons. A feat she accomplished for a second time, and likely not the last. Until her dying day, Sansa Stark would believe not in gods or ravens or anything else but Daenerys Targaryen. 

 

\--

 

“What shall we name them?” Dany mused. 

 

Sansa turned her head atop the silky pillows on their bed as the dwindling candles in their chamber gave away the late hour. 

 

“I don’t know. My sister would be a better one to ask,” Sansa said. 

 

A coo from between them drew their attention away from each other and instead to the pile of baby dragons that were curled up on the bed. The cooing one snapped at Dany’s arm and giggling, she ran her fingers along the crown of his head and down his spine. 

 

“I’m not asking her, I’m asking you,” Dany persisted. 

 

The neglected dragon, a deep velvet blue and shimmering even in the low light, looked expectantly at Sansa to provide his affection. She stretched her hand closer, fearful still, but reached his neck unharmed where she ran her knuckle up and down. A contented chirp spilled from him and Sansa hadn’t felt this softened by a little creature since Lady was a pup. 

 

“This one should be called… Moonbeam,” Sansa suggested. 

 

Dany laughed and said, “Dragons are fearsome and imposing creatures of great might and power! He won’t inspire much fear if he is to be called ‘Moonbeam.’” 

 

“Well he’s not fearsome yet,” Sansa argued as the dragon curled against Sansa’s arm and settled in to sleep. “And he shimmers like a fallen moonbeam, like you do sometimes.” 

 

Looking up, she found Daenerys pink with demure delight. Nodding, she smiled fondly. 

 

“Moonbeam it is,” Dany said, gathering both dragons into her arms as she sat up. “Come, let’s put them to bed.” 

 

They had repurposed a massive, gilded birdcage that had likely once been meant for gifted exotic birds from Essos or something of that nature. It was taller than Sansa and as wide as the balcony it sat on; plenty of room for two just born dragons to flit around and stay out of trouble. They made no fuss as they curled up among the silks in the large basket Daenerys had added. 

 

“What about the other one?” Sansa remembered. 

 

Daenerys shut the latch and held loosely onto the bars as she watched her children. The unnamed dragon shifted his emerald green wings and blinked his grey eyes one more time before succumbing to sleep. 

 

“How about Eddarys?” the Queen offered up. Sansa blinked silently at her, not sure if she heard her right. 

 

“Eddarys, like…” Sansa began, but her tightening throat strangled the rest. 

 

“...your father, yes. Eddard was his name, no?” Daenerys clarified. Sansa nodded slowly, but merely stared at the Queen as she spoke. “He was a great warrior and an even better man, from what I’ve been told. Honorable and just, but kind and understanding. At the risk of his own family, he protected mine and raised my nephew as his own. But most importantly, he gave me you. It deeply saddens me that I’ll never be able to thank him for tha-” 

 

Sansa crashed her lips into Dany’s, gripping the back of her head and opening her mouth to kiss her again and again. Dany melted into her after the suddenness and held her face in her hands when Sansa pulled back for air. 

 

Between breaths, Sansa whispered into her mouth, “I love you, too.” 

 

She pulled back a bit further to watch Dany’s eyes snap open and her eyebrows nearly disappear into her hairline. The question of certainty trapped behind her slack jawed lips. 

 

“I love you,” Sansa repeated, louder to erase any doubt Dany might have. She stroked the loose tendrils of Dany’s hair and giggled with the deluge of lightness filling her up and making her dizzy. She added, “I did before and I should have said it back to you, but I’m saying it now. I love you, Dany.” 

 

Dany herself laughed giddily and pulled Sansa back down into a searing kiss. She drew the Queen up into her and tilted her head back to kiss her deeply, breathing all the ‘I love you’s’ she should have said into her mouth. Whether it was Dany pulling at the ties of Sansa’s night dress or Sansa tugging at the laces of Dany’s, it was decided they needed to go inside. 

 

As soon as they did, Sansa had Dany up against the nearest wall, shedding their cloaks and night dresses. She nudged Dany’s legs open with her knee and swiftly pulled Dany up her thigh so her feet hovered just off the ground. Her body pressed entirely to Dany’s to hold her up as she nipped and kissed her jaw and neck and revelled in Dany’s soft, impatient, and whimpering gasps. She was Sansa’s, all Sansa’s, and she loved her achingly. She loved her skin and her breath in her ear and her silky soft hair that still smelled of the bonfire smoke. She loved her urging nails raking down her back and her canting hips against her thigh. She loved her lips, pink and plush and begging to be bitten. 

 

So she did. She dragged Dany’s lip between her teeth and felt the flames lick at her stomach with Dany’s growl. She transferred them to the long table, sweeping the books and scrolls carelessly to the floor and sitting her Queen on the edge. 

 

Pausing to look at her, Sansa let her hands softly graze the apples of her cheeks, rosey and hot to the touch. Her hands, along with her gaze, trailed down her shoulders and over the swells of her chest, into the bend of her waist and back out to grip her hips greedily. Dany inhaled sharply at that, and Sansa couldn’t help but press a smug kiss to her lips. Sansa’s hands drifted a little further to guide her thighs apart just enough for her to step between them.

 

She loved how Daenerys collapsed onto her shoulders when she pulled the Queen forward and onto her fingers. She loved how slowly and unbridled, Dany came undone in her arms with staccato breaths Sansa caught in her mouth. She loved holding her impossibly close, together undulating like waves on the sea as Dany’s legs tightened around her waist, arching forward and nearly off the table. 

 

She loved how far too soon and not soon enough, Dany grappled with Sansa’s neck and clawed at her back clumsily as she tumbled into bliss. Sansa could hardly hold her steady with Dany’s skin slick with sweat. But as hips slowed, and Dany pressed her nose to Sansa’s cheek, it was petal soft breath carrying the whimpers of her name,  _ Sansa, Sansa, oh Sansa, my love,  _ she easily loved the most.  

 

\--

 

The first year of winter had been harsh to the North and it’s stores. Sansa apologized at least three times to Daenerys for their meager offerings until the Queen told her that she once spent months on dried horse meat alone. Comparably, everything else was a feast. 

 

Overall, the Queen’s visit was fine. By this point, all of the Starks knew why she was there, and, if only because there was little else to do in the dead of winter, gossip had trickled that knowledge down to a few lesser houses. At any rate, the raging storms across the North had Sansa urging the Lords to stay at their castles instead of brave them to greet the Queen. It also granted her family the much needed time alone with her, if they were to continue their less than courtly romance. 

 

“Sansa tells me you spent time in Braavos as a child?” Daenerys addressed Arya, while delicately slicing her pickled radishes. 

 

“Mmm,” Arya grunted, not bothering to look up from spearing her potatoes. She made it clear that was all she intended to say by shoving an abundant forkful into her mouth. Sansa glared down the table at her sister, but Dany simply nodded. 

 

“And what brought you there? It’s quite a long way for a girl that small and alone,” the Queen continued their conversation. 

 

Arya eyed Daenerys intently as she audibly swallowed her food before deciding to answer, “Training.” 

 

Daenerys nodded again, quirking her brow and placing a quarter of a radish in her mouth. The Queen may not mind Arya’s surliness, but Sansa nearly strangled her knife in her grip to channel her annoyance as discreetly as possible. The least she could do was try, for gods’ sake. 

 

“Arya is quite the swordsman, your Grace, or rather, swordswoman?” Jon piped up from down the table. “I’ve seen her spar and I wouldn’t want to get caught on the wrong side of her blade.” 

 

“I don’t doubt that,” Daenerys said earnestly, turning back to Arya. “Are you training to become a knight, then?” 

 

The question gave Arya pause, for once. She chewed over it slowly, and literally. Sansa set her silverware down to watch, as she actually never considered this question for her sister. Before Brienne, the idea of her becoming a knight was a silly daydream, but after all that she had seen and endured, Sansa couldn’t say either way if Arya even wanted that anymore. 

 

“No, not a knight,” she answered, thoughtfully and gravely. There was a moment where Sansa thought she was on the edge of saying more, but she merely forked a pickled bean and ate it with a grimace. 

 

Daenerys smartly took the queue to leave her to her musings and turned back to Jon, inquiring, “And what about you, Jon Snow? Tales of your skill in battle and north of the Wall are known, even in the south. Do you seek knighthood?” 

 

Jon leaned back from his plate and chuckled, “Knighthood? I’m just happy to have a seat at my family’s table for once, your Grace.” 

 

Daenerys faltered for a moment, looking down at her plate as she said, “Of course, and I realize the Starks weren’t the only House to deny you family. I’m sorry if I wasn’t… we share blood and I’ve made no effort to welcome you into our ancestral home.” 

 

“Please, your Grace, I didn’t mean it like that,” Jon insisted. “I have no doubt that your brother was an honorable man, but Ned Stark is the only father I knew. I was raised in Winterfell. I nearly died protecting it and I would a thousand times over. I’m more Stark than anything else and I belong in the North.” 

 

The Queen smiled gratefully at him and set her silverware down deliberately. 

 

“Then let’s make it official, shall we?” she proposed. Sansa looked equally as perplexed as Jon, for the first time in her life. 

 

“Make what official?” she asked. 

 

“If you don’t desire knighthood, let me at least legitimize you, Lord Snow,” Daenerys stated. All four of them fixed their eyes on Jon, even Bran, who had turned to acknowledge them for the first time at such an announcement. 

 

Jon, to his credit, was as bewildered as humanly possible, and resisted, “It’s quite unnecessary, your Grace. I’m seated at my family’s table and my brother and sisters treat me as their own.” 

 

Daenerys’ gaze softened as she imparted, “I know what it means to carry your family’s name with pride, especially a family you have lost. For a long time, it was all I had. I know a small part of you must still want to bear it as you bear your sigil.” 

 

“He does,” Arya conceded on his behalf. Jon regarded her incredulously, but she doubled down. “What? You do! You’ve always wanted to be a Stark, ever since we were little. You used to tell me all the time.” 

 

“It’s different now, I gave up my chance at titles when I took the Black and I’m not even a Stark by birth. I’m a Targaryen, by law,” Jon argued. 

 

“Who knows of your true parentage, outside of this room, besides Maester Tarly?” Daenerys asked. She looked around to the Stark children and all of them shook their heads to confirm they’ve stayed mum on the matter. “Then no one will be the wiser. The North knows Stark blood runs through your veins and that is all that matters to them. If you say you are more Stark than anything, then that is what you shall be, if you choose.” 

 

Jon leaned forward to put all of his siblings within eyesight. Smiling warmly, they all nodded in agreement that it was time. 

 

“You’re not the lone wolf any longer,” Arya recited soundly at him. 

 

If there was anything more Jon needed to make his decision, that seemed to seal it. Regarding the Queen, he nodded curtly and stood to walk before the table. Once he kneeled, Daenerys stood with hands flush against the wrinkled wood and began. 

 

“By my right as Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, I strip Jon Snow of his bastard birth and hereby name him Jon Stark, son of Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell and first of his name.” 

 

The words rang through the empty hall to land on empty benches and tables, but to Jon, Sansa knew those seated at the table were all the people he needed to bear witness. His family, both by birth and by choice. Jon looked up at them all, wincing with overwhelming emotion. 

 

“To Lord Stark,” Sansa proclaimed, raising her cup as her Queen and her siblings followed suit and chorused her toast. The proud eyes and quiet honor of Sansa’s father shone through Jon in that moment. Along with a few brimming tears that Sansa was too polite to point out. 

 

“Are you crying?” Arya teased him. Jon erupted into a good natured laugh that was rather contagious amongst the Starks. 

 

He stood with a shaking head and a wry grin, grumbling as he stalked back to his seat, “Oh, shut up.” 

 

\--

 

It was one of the chillier nights in King’s Landing, which was still warmer than the hottest summer day in the North, so Sansa hardly minded. Between the extra sheets the servants had drawn and the Queen’s hearth-like skin radiating heat, Sansa slept as cozily as a swaddled newborn. 

 

About that, her hand flopped onto cool silk where warm skin should have been, rousing her from her dream. Blinking at the black outlines of the Queen’s chambers, she scoured the room for a sign of her. No open door and no candlelight at the desk. A concerned frown nearly settled on her lips before she spotted a familiar silhouette on the balcony, accompanied by the snuffs and rumblings of a nearby dragon. 

 

Swathed in a much too luxurious silken robe, Sansa slipped out onto the terrace and into the crisp night air. Dany turned to her and smiled radiantly. Her pleated, white nightdress billowed like a cloud in the breeze and her long tresses floated behind her like a stream of silver. Smoke curled around her from her dragon and her skin looked effervescent in the moonlight. Blinking dreamily at the vision before her, Sansa understood why the prettiest songs were always about Targaryens. 

 

“I’m sorry to wake you, my love,” Dany said, as she left Drogon to approach Sansa. “A few moments in the air calms a restless mind.” 

 

“It was missing you that woke me,” Sansa admitted. Daenerys wrapped her arms around Sansa’s hips and pulled her in for an indulgent kiss. Afterwards, her eyes fluttered open to fix Sansa with a look of wild adoration that sent her heart racing. “I can imagine how soaring high above the world can make it, and all it’s problems, feel so small.” 

 

The Queen slowly smiled with a glint in her eye, or perhaps it was a trick of the moon and the haze of sleep Sansa had yet to shake. 

 

“You don’t have to imagine. I can show you if you want,” Daenerys suggested excitedly. 

 

Sansa’s eyes widened and she laughed at the very idea. 

 

“Certainly not, I… I’m not like Arya. I’m not well suited for things like that, and I’m hardly dressed for it,” Sansa protested, but Dany held her knowing smile. Her hands glided up and down Sansa’s back soothingly and she could feel the warmth seeping through the robe. 

 

“Sansa, I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that for whatever you may desire, you need only ask,” Daenerys stated matter-of-factly. 

 

“Oh, I have,” Sansa said haughtily, which elicited a chuckle from her Queen. However, Sansa’s face slid into seriousness. She dropped her gaze as she explained, “I just could never ask that of you. I mean… they’re your dragons! Your children, your blood. They’re everything to you, and how can I ask it as if they were equal to some silly trinket.” 

 

“They’re not  _ everything _ to me, not anymore. Not since I met you,” Daenerys’s informed her, with a love drunk smile as she caressed Sansa’s cheek. “And besides, you’re not asking. I’m offering.” 

 

Sansa peered over at Drogon, perched precariously on the stone wall of the balcony. Gargantuan and imposing in his stature but his red eyes blinked calmly at her, if not a little curious. Looking back at Daenerys, she nodded and the Queen’s smile burst into a toothy grin. She tugged Sansa by the hand over to her dragon, who leaned forward and dropped his shoulder expectantly. 

 

“Grab onto the little spikes on his back, he won’t mind,” Daenerys instructed from his back, leaning down with her outstretched hand to help Sansa hoist herself onto the great dragon. “Other than that, it’s almost like riding a horse.” 

 

Nearly astride him, Sansa slipped for just a moment as Drogon adjusted to her weight with grunts of smoke. Her arms wrapped around the Queen’s waist and she held herself flush against her until he settled. She pulled herself up finally and heaved a sigh of excitement with a pinch of nervous regret. 

 

“Like riding a horse, right,” she repeated, although less than convinced. She felt Dany’s chest rumble from her mirthful laugh. 

 

“Hold tight, my love,” was the only warning Sansa had before Drogon launched himself from the balcony and plummeted head first towards the city below. Had she any air left in her lungs, Sansa would have screamed in terror as the rooftops of the city below grew increasingly closer. Certain they were about to die and this had been a horrible mistake. Sansa buried her face in Dany’s neck and felt a swoop in her stomach and the sudden rush of wind. No impact. Dany’s silk dress still clutched in her fists. Her heart thumping, very much alive, in her throat. 

 

“Sansa, open your eyes,” Dany called back to her. 

 

Exhaling shakily, she obeyed and what a sight it was. King’s Landing sprawled out in every direction, red roofs tinged purple in the light of the moon and dotted with flickering torches. It was as if it was another world, Westeros never before so beautiful and peaceful as it slept beneath them. Drogon pulled them up as they broached Visenya’s Hill, veering slightly left and continuing to climb up into the sky. 

 

The stone turned to lush green treetops below as they soared over the Kingswood, and Drogon took them higher still. The Red Keep shrank to no bigger than a dollhouse in the distance and gave way to the rolling hills and thimble sized castles of the Crownlands. Weightless and untouchable, Sansa could easily forget everyone and everything up here.  Nothing but her and Dany and the cool breeze whipping through her hair and Westeros no more than a Maester’s great map strewn across the horizon. 

 

Turning her gaze forward, she caught the Queen watching her from over her shoulder. A bout of giggles overtook them both at the exhilaration of it all. And yet, despite glorious views and soaring amongst the clouds, it was Dany, as silver as the moon against the backdrop of the starry night sky while her laughter twinkled in the air like chimes, that had Sansa utterly taken.

 

In one final dive, Dany led Drogon down over the dark expanse of Blackwater Bay. He drifted just over the surface, following the moon’s distorted reflection on the choppy water. Sansa could have reached down and trailed a hand over the waves, if she was braver. Drogon must have sensed her desire, as he stretched one claw out to cut through the water and leave a splashy stream in their wake. 

 

It ended as abruptly as it began, with Drogon circling the castle until he landed with a crunch on the balcony. After depositing his cargo, and a thankful scratch from Dany, he flapped his bat-like wings and took off to the sky. 

 

Before Dany could fully turn to face Sansa, she was pulled into a searing, hungry kiss. Sansa held her cheek firmly and pulled her by the waist so close she could feel her whine in her chest before she heard it. She kissed her for what felt like forever, hands grasping at her hips and rear to ground herself in the Queen until she felt herself finally come down from the high of such an experience. 

 

Pulling back, Dany raked her fingertips through Sansa’s hair and regarded her with such reverence, Sansa wanted to look away. The Queen’s hold on her, thumb stroking her jaw, wouldn’t allow it. 

 

“You’ve never looked more beautiful than you did up there, my love,” Dany mused, still chasing her breath. “The look on your face of such joy and peace… I wish we could have stay up there forever. Since that night in Dragonstone, I always wish every second with you could last forever. Of all the things I can buy or conquer or demand, the one thing I’ll never have enough of is time with you.” 

 

It was Sansa’s turn to smile coyly this time, and she teased, “I do know of a simple solution to that problem.” 

 

Dany blinked blankly at her for a beat before realization washed over her and guilt quickly took its place. 

 

“I could never ask that of you,” she echoed Sansa’s earlier concern. “How could I, when all marriage has brought you is suffering and betrayal? To leave the home you fought so hard to return to and come here? A place ridden with loss where you were once a prisoner. I’m sorry I got so caught up I just… I’m grateful for every moment you spend with me, and I apologize if I made you think I was demanding more.” 

 

Sansa smiled widely, overcome with affection at how deeply the Queen loved her, but also how foolishly unaware she was at how that love was returned. She pulled herself from their embrace and sauntered across the balcony casually. 

 

“You know, I always knew I was meant to leave the North,” Sansa mused. She rested her hands on the railing and Dany had to step closer to hear. “I didn’t know how, but I knew I would. My brothers, and even my sister, they all thrived there and I couldn’t ever manage to chase away the chill at night. Even when I longed for home during my awful time here, the Winterfell I returned to never felt like home. Nowhere did, until you.” 

 

At her last word, she turned to address Dany over her shoulder. The Queen swallowed thickly and made no move to approach her, so Sansa began to advance. 

 

“I much prefer what you’ve done with this place, truly,” she continued, gesturing to the castle sprouting up all around them. “The worst parts for me were melted in Drogon’s destruction of it, anyway. Also, I don’t consider Littlefinger’s trade of me to the Bolton’s or Cersei’s political ploy in pairing me with Tyrion as marriages any more than you did your sale to the Dothraki.” 

 

Daenerys shrugged in reluctant agreement and stared longingly up at Sansa. A serenity engulfed her as she stood a mere foot from the Queen. Her pulse should be racing erratically, like she noticed Dany’s was as Sansa took her hands, but she felt nothing but bold and certain. And how could she not? She wasn’t the meek, silly little dove anymore. Sansa Stark was the Red Wolf, the leader of the North, and now a dragon rider. 

 

“Besides, you’re not asking. I’m offering, my hand, that is,” she said sweetly, and squeezed Dany’s hand for good measure as she pulled her closer. The Queen smiled wryly at Sansa throwing her own words back at her. She drew herself up as much as she could, given her short stature, and Sansa, losing herself in those crystalline eyes, uttered, “Marry me.” 

 

“Yes, my Queen,” Dany answered emphatically. She stood atop her toes to reach just an inch from Sansa’s lips, upon which she whispered, “I want for nothing else in this world” 

 

Sansa couldn’t contain herself a moment longer, and she closed the distance. She laid the tenderest of kisses to Dany’s lips, tracing her hands over her hair and jaw and neck. Her movements soft and languid, so as to taste every inch of her for as long as she pleased. Queen Daenerys she may share with all of Westeros, but Dany was hers alone. Her Dany, who among many other miracles, brought boundless love back into Sansa’s life. For one night longer, she could pretend that time stood still, just for them on that balcony as the lives of their people carried on below. 

 

In the morning, they would speak to the council and Maesters and tell the world of their betrothal. Maybe the country will riot at such an unholy marriage and plot their downfall. Maybe the lesser houses will rejoice at a union between North and South. Maybe they’ll shower them with love as their Queens take the rotten world their fathers built and sow peace and prosperity across the Realm. Maybe they’ll cower in fear as their Queens just burn it all down. Maybe the people will sing hundreds of songs about the Dragon Queen and her Red Wolf, how the Targaryen with skin like snow fell in love with the Stark kissed by fire. 

 

Little was certain beyond death and winter, that had been Sansa’s harshest lesson. No war was truly won and enemies would always be lurking, or just yet to be born. Tragedy cared little for reason nor justice. 

 

In Dany’s arms, however, none of that mattered. She pulled Sansa close and kissed promises and dreams into her skin. Glistening moonlight hair cocooned them and Dany’s eyes were so ravished with love, that they filled Sansa with a fire of her own. Let those pompous Lords riot and plot and sing their songs, she thought. She was to be a Queen now, not them. If she could build such a happiness as this for herself, after all that they had taken from her, she could build it for everyone and that is the kind of Queen she will be. 


End file.
